A Journey In Social Mediatag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-13897892009-04-13T23:29:45-04:00A journal about my personal thoughts regarding evolving a comprehensive social media strategy at a large company.TypePadThe Last Posttag:typepad.com,2003:post-654311332009-04-13T23:29:45-04:002009-04-13T23:29:45-04:00Life is a journey, isn't it? Back in August 2007, I started sharing with you how I and a few others embarked on a journey to transform our company into a 2.0-savvy enterprise. Now, almost two years later, it's almost...Chuck Hollis

Life is a journey, isn't it?

Back in August 2007, I started sharing with you how I and a few others embarked on a journey to transform our company into a 2.0-savvy enterprise.

Now, almost two years later, it's almost time for me to move on to another role at my company.

But before I close off this chapter, I wanted to share a few final thoughts with everyone.

So, What's Going On?

It's all good -- really.

At the start, I was asked to put a strategy and several efforts in motion to get this whole social media proficiency thing off the ground and moving in the right direction. I did that.

Thanks to the efforts of many passionate people at my company, I can honestly say "mission accomplished".

Sure, there's always more to do -- in some ways we've only just begun.

But there's no denying that my company is a fundamentally different place in April 2009 than it was in August 2007 when it comes to being a "2.0" company.

We've got many thousands of people actively collaborating and sharing on our internal platform. Not only is it successful beyond our wildest imagination, we can't imagine getting business done without it.

We've graduated dozens of external bloggers and literally hundreds of "unofficial brand managers" from this platform. You can see them out there -- in force -- every day of the week. No one could ask for anything more.

We've taken that momentum and created our external community platform initiative, and it too has enjoyed great success so far.

But that's just the surface stuff. When you really look closely, there's far more interesting things starting to happen.

Subtle -- But Profound --- Changes Abound

When most people at our company think about process, or collaboration, or engagement -- they're now starting to think about things in 2.0 ways. It shows up in just about every conversation these days.

As we look at different staffing plans across the company, we're starting to see more job descriptions for "community developer" and "community evangelist". To me, this represents a structural change in how people are thinking about resources -- and strategies -- going forward.

Our new "community college" (coursework regarding how to design and build a community) is now extremely popular internally. I think the people teaching this material will be busy for quite a while!

Our investment pattern in marketing and other business functions has signficantly shifted. There's far less spent on traditional collaboration and process, and far more effort invested into learning how to do things the new way.

One small (large?) example: we're a product company, so it's all about the launch. You wouldn't try to accomplish a major launch at my company anymore without a detailed "social plan".

As I write this, we're planning a humongous product launch tomorrow, April 14th. About 50% of the total launch effort went into 2.0 stuff. That's big, if you think about it.

I'm very proud of the fact that our executive management has learned to become very comfortable with the 2.0 management ethic. People are now quite comfortable publicly disagreeing with each other without being disagreeable.

Communications and engagement have become much more transparent and open. The org chart isn't what it used to be!

And when we have the inevitable "issues", there's a willingness to work through various pros and cons, rather than the instinctive "shut it down" from yesteryear.

There's no valid excuse anymore to not knowing what's going on across the company. In the past, many people felt it was the company's job to make sure that they knew what was going on; now that responsibility has been shifted to the individual.

Our efforts in social media proficiency have started to transform our corporate culture and leadership style in an extremely positive and progressive way. That's very cool when you think about it.

Who Gets The Credit?

We all do.

Sure, I had a lot to do with it at the beginning, but this was no solo act. My job was only to come up with a plan and get things started. The small handful of helpers we started with became dozens of helpers over time. These then became hundreds of helpers and then literally thousands upon thousands.

We call them the "social people".

They're always out there sharing, contributing, starting a conversation, proposing a new thought, inviting people to chat about what they care about. They're the "connectors" in our company -- inside and out.

And now we've given them tools and a supportive environment to weave their magic.

More To Do!!

We're not resting on our laurels.

For example, we're still in dire need of an underlying content architecture that spans multiple domains in our world. Sure, we've got some things working, but the world will need better solutions here.

We've all lashed up our own "knowldge management" environments -- RSS readers, Tweetdeck, Google Alerts -- we all need our own 360-degree radar screen and mega-cross-posting cockpit for this new era. Better tools for our new information workers are still sorely needed.

For every business process we've begun to impact, there are still dozens more to go. For every passionate contributor at our company, there are still many more to attract and engage.

We never got a good handle on hard metrics, either. In all fairness, once people saw what we were doing, nobody really cared too much about that topic -- so why work to better understand numbers that weren't really needed or wanted? I don't think others will be so lucky in this regard.

But -- make no mistake -- we've started something very big and very visible, and there's no turning back now -- no matter what happens, or who is involved.

Good people are involved across the company now.

So, What Am I Doing Now?

For people who know me, I have this pattern of being attracted to really big ideas that are poorly understood but really important.

That's what got me into this social media stuff in the first place -- it was a really big idea, poorly understood and inarguably very important.

But, over time, most everything I work on matures and evolves. More people get engaged. The core issues get better understood by more people. Momentum builds, success becomes more visible.

And, as a result, there's less need for a person like me to be directly engaged.

And, at the same time, I have the pleasure of working in an industry (information technology) where there is no shortage of big ideas that are poorly understood but really important.

So I find myself being drawn in to work on the next Big Thing. One thing I've always believed -- don't deny your true nature. Moving from topic to topic is the only way I've been able to get through this thing called "career" without going insane from boredom.

Unfortunately, I can't be all that public with regards to what I'm working on now. You can probably get a few hints from my other blog if you're really curious.

To All Of You On Your Own Journey ...

I continue to meet people who read this blog, and have decided to embark on their own personal journeys at their respective companies.

To all of you -- godspeed. I will always look back at the last two years as one of the coolest -- and most significant -- organizational tasks I have ever undertaken.

And I hope you do better than I did!

Respecting Controltag:typepad.com,2003:post-643080852009-03-18T08:57:31-04:002009-03-18T08:57:31-04:00As we make our journey forward, we're getting more recognition, as well as encountering a few new learnings. As a recent example, yesterday I got an email from someone who attended a recent IDC conference, and EMC's external EMC Community...Chuck Hollis

As we make our journey forward, we're getting more recognition, as well as encountering a few new learnings.

As a recent example, yesterday I got an email from someone who attended a recent IDC conference, and EMC's external EMC Community Network (ECN) went up on the big screen as an example of "good" corporate external social media.

All of that is great, but what's more interesting to me are the new learnings along the way. And I'd like to share one today.

Posting Of Sensitive Documents

Much angst and concern exists in corporate social media projects around this issue -- everyone wants to encourage more sharing and collaboration, but not every internal document is meant for every employee's eyes.

And there's no easy answer.

Push the pendulum too far in one direction, you'll end up with hundreds or thousands of gated discussions that just end up being a fancy dumping ground for documents that no one can read, and no one can discuss.

We've lived in this world, we don't want to go back to it.

Push the pendulum too far in the other direction, and there will be a backlash against the corporate social media problem. It's a reality of the corporate world that not everything can be shared with everyone.

We'd like to avoid onerous corporate policies, content review processes, etc. -- all the 1.0 backlashes that can result when people think something has gotten a bit out of control.

Getting Back To Basics

So, if we go all the way back to the core reasons why we're investing all this time and money in social media stuff, you'll probably remember that -- at least for us -- it was all about proficiency.

Sure, we wanted to communicate and collaborate and improve how we work. But to do that on a sustained and meaningful way, we had to invest in learning new skills and behaviors. Call them "enterprise 2.0 workplace skills" for lack of anything better.

And, as a result, many of us are on the lookout for new types and classes of skills and behaviors that we should identify and promote.

And I think I'm going to add another one to the list.

Here's What Happens

Respected individual comes across very interesting and useful document. Said respected individual posts document on internal social media platform.

A very senior individual in the organization expresses significant concern and anxiety for posting of sensitive document -- and isn't quite sure how to handle the situation.

Posting individual makes a strong case for increased information sharing across the organization as a part of better business practices and the general good. In theory, yes, but ...

Very senior individual makes a strong case for more restrictive policies, review, enforcement, policing, etc. of the social platform. Wants to do the right thing, but damage exceeds benefit in their eyes now.

It's not an everyday occurence, but it has happened a few times, and it's likely to happen more in the future -- unless we focus on a few things.

The Core Issue -- Respecting Control

In each case so far, the senior individual had a significant responsibility to the business. They were responsible for product development, or internal policies, or something else that was a pretty significant function on the corporate landscape.

And, as such, they need to be granted a certain level of control to deliver on that responsibility.

Put plainly, if you're in charge of a business unit or function, you should have some say in what sort of things get broadly shared, and what sort of things have a more limited internal audience.

And having an internal social media platform with lots of proficient people who tend to share everything they come across shouldn't take that measure of control from those senior individuals.

Social media is supposed to empower people, and not render them powerless. And that list of empowered people should include very senior managers and executives.

This is not a pedantic debate around "we need more transparency in our company" or "information sharing is good" or the inevitable "power to the people".

No, this is about understanding how real organizations need to work, and the need to respect control.

It's A Judgment Call

I know I've looked at some internal document, and thought to myself "boy, I bet a bunch of other people would find this interesing and useful."

That's the first reaction.

I've learned now to think again "gee, is there anyone in the organization who might have an issue with me broadly sharing this document?".

And if there's the slightest doubt, I make the effort to reach out (via private email) and solicit an opinion or two. Sometimes an initial reaction of "heck no" can be reasoned with a bit of back-and-forth discussion. And sometimes not.

But I've learned to respect that business leaders across the organization need to control access to certain kinds of information.

I may not agree with them, but that's not the point -- I need to respect their control.

Here's the key insight -- if we all make a concerted effort to respect control, this whole social media thing will move along all the more rapidly, won't it?

Mistakes Will Be Made

Many of us who are active on the social platform have made the same mistake -- we've broadly shared something we thought was interesting, but we missed the fact that someone who has responsibility might not agree with us.

The recovery formula is pretty simple:

- immediately apologize and admit the mistake- offer to take the document immediately down- acknowledge their concerns and right to control certain kinds of information being widely shared- express a sincere intent to do better in the future- and apologize again

My advice? Coach people that this is not an intellectual or emotional debate. It's about respecting people's need to control certain kinds of information.

And we all are going to have to learn to respect that going forward.

Jive's 3.0 Releasetag:typepad.com,2003:post-639039832009-03-10T17:40:58-04:002009-03-10T17:40:58-04:00No, I am not a paid endorser for Jive Software. Neither EMC nor myself receive any special considerations for what we say about them. And, behind the scenes, we beat them up as badly as we beat up all of...Chuck Hollis

No, I am not a paid endorser for Jive Software.

Neither EMC nor myself receive any special considerations for what we say about them. And, behind the scenes, we beat them up as badly as we beat up all of our other technology vendors.

Going back in this journey, readers of this blog might remember that I made a big deal about a few key concepts.

First, although we realized that there was most definitely an internal domain for social collaboration, and there was an external domain for social collaboration -- we could easily see that -- over time -- they'd be pretty much the same domain, albeit with slightly different rules of the road.

So we wanted a social software vendor that saw things our way.

Second, we believed that this was all about getting our company proficient at this stuff. We couldn't be expected to have meaningful conversations outside our company if we didn't know how to do that inside our company.

So we started with internal proficiency, and then grew into external proficiency. Two separate focus areas, but -- ultimately the same set of people at our company having progressively larger conversations.

That's the big idea I saw in Jive's new release -- the stunningly obvious realization that -- for most companies -- the ideal state is connecting both together.

I don't know whether EMC was unduly influential in Jive's thinking, but I have to say -- they're thinking about the problem -- and the opportunity -- pretty much as we do.

And A New Name

Changing the name of your core product is an emotional decision. I know, I've been there.

And, considering that the Clearspace name has built up an enormous amount of brand equity in our circles -- well, I bet there were more than a few internal meetings on this topic.

But the first rule of product naming is to clearly communicate what your product does in a way that people can easily understand it.

And "social business software" (or the inevitable SBS acronym) meets that agenda. It's software for businesses that recognize that "social" is the new way of driving productivity across their businesses.

I get it. I just hope everyone else will.

Simply put: enterprises will need business software that can both connect people internally as a prerequisite to connecting them externally. And if it's the same software, so much the better.

There Will Be Those That Disagree

I saw one industry analyst who (respectfully) was disagreeing with this view.

His point (as I understood it) was that the motivation for internal social media and external social media within large enterprises was different: for example, the marketing people might be thinking "external" while the HR people are thinking "internal".

And each group would have its own shopping lists, hence the need for entirely different platforms.

That may be the case in some situations, but I think he's speaking about how social media proficiency starts -- and less about where it ends up.

I could easily make either an economic case -- or a strategic case -- that there's strong appeal in a single platform that does both using a unified set of capabilities and a consistent user experience.

I would point as evidence the evolution of other enterprise software platforms.

Transactional business processes started off as ad-hoc functional packages (remember Accounts Payable and MRP modules?) and ended up as integrated ERP.

Personal productivity software started out as individual packages for word processing, email and spreadsheet -- and ended up as productivity suites. Lots of other examples if you think about it.

The same laws of physics and market evolution inevitably will apply to social business software.

It's just that some people might not recognize the future when they see it :-)

Social People and The Big Conversationtag:typepad.com,2003:post-632335372009-02-23T12:09:00-05:002009-02-23T12:09:00-05:00Sometimes you get things right. Whether you're smart, or lucky, or a bit of both -- it should be a moment for rejoicing since it doesn't happen as often as you'd like :-) It's struck me that when we put...Chuck Hollis

Sometimes you get things right. Whether you're smart, or lucky, or a bit of both -- it should be a moment for rejoicing since it doesn't happen as often as you'd like :-)

It's struck me that when we put our overall corporate social media strategy together, there were two big themes: encouraging social media skills and applying them to ever-wider conversations.

Looks like that was the right thing to do ...

The Germ Of An Idea

David Spencer offered up a telling comment to my last post that confirmed my thinking here.

"At EMC we didn't tell people where to go, what to play with or what not to play with.

We have smart, social people who feel empowered to represent our brand and themselves at the same time all over the place, and the payoff is nearly automatic.

There are certainly other approaches to take, but I really enjoy the organic growth that our approach has led to."

He's absolutely spot-on. That's exactly what we did.

It's Hard To Get This Insight Across

As a matter of fact, it's deep insight that I struggle to impart with all those I talk to about corporate social media proficiency. Lots of focus on "what's the best platform?" or "who is in charge?" or "how do we keep bad things from happening?" et. al.

All of this tends to distract from what's turning out to be the keys to success in corporate social media proficiency.

It's The "Social" In "Social Media"

First, it's about getting people comfortable and proficient with all of this. That means having a place to practice (e.g. internal platform), continual messages of encouragement (from peers and others), and lightweight governance that encourages empowerment and experimentation.

Today, we have an ever-expanding crew of 50 or so EMC people who are (a) extremely comfortable with all of this, (b) represent our company and our brand pretty well, and (c) like interacting with other people at EMC who are interested in doing the same.

You'll see them inside and outside the company on a variety of platforms. They are perhaps some of our most valuable and important employees -- although that's probably not widely recognized yet.

Second, the value of corporate social media is in direct proportion to the size of the conversation -- hence my preference for the term "the big conversation" -- the bigger the better!

That means we started with a "no private spaces" policy on our internal platform. We encouraged proficient bloggers behind the firewall to go outside the firewall. We empowered people to leave comments on other blogs, including competitors. When we started building external communities (ECN), we had plenty of people at our company who wanted to play for all the right reasons.

And when Twitter came along, we were there in force. Nothing had to be explicitly done. No strategy meetings, no amendments to corporate policy, etc. etc. It just happened. And I wasn't even paying attention at the time :-)

I should point out that -- whenever the next cool social tool or platform comes along, and it inevitably will -- we're automatically pre-positioned to leverage that one as well. It all has a nice, organic self-sustaining feel to it.

Which puts us in great shape for whatever comes down the road, no?

Is This The TIme To Write A Book?

In some regards, the fundamental processes and investments we put in place a while back are now self-sustaining. We're transforming our company into a 2.0 enterprise. There's no turning back, either.

Sure, we'll need to make more investments -- either to optimize our use of the tools, or to accelerate one use case or another. All minor tweaks to a running machine, IMHO.

But I'm wondering -- how useful are our insights to others? How many organizations will want to transform themselves into 2.0-style companies, and realize that it's not a straightforward journey?

Let me know your thoughts ... thanks!

Understanding Corporate Twittertag:typepad.com,2003:post-631444812009-02-21T08:11:18-05:002009-02-23T16:43:00-05:00Yesterday was an all-day learning experience. I was taking time off, but wanted to spend a whole day getting to understand the dynamics of microblogging (specifically Twitter) with my corporate social media hat on. I had previously spent time searching...Chuck Hollis

Yesterday was an all-day learning experience.

I was taking time off, but wanted to spend a whole day getting to understand the dynamics of microblogging (specifically Twitter) with my corporate social media hat on.

I had previously spent time searching Twitter and other microblogging sites, and had signed up for a few, but had never really dove into the deep end, so to speak. Well, I finally did.

It was an eye-opener, to put it mildly.

What's This All About?

I think most people understand what blogging is all about, and the fact that services like Twitter are called "microblogging" is probably a disservice. Blogging is rather static; microblogging is like a continuous, never-ending conversation -- 140 characters at a time.

My initial reaction made me think of "collective brain hum" -- it's a very noisy and confusing environment at the outset -- but, given some patience, patterns emerge, and it becomes approachable, understandable and leverageable.

Sure, a lot of what you see on Twitter appears as mindless chatter, but -- make no mistake -- that's the same sort of chit-chat you see when people are getting to know each other, staying in touch, and forming social relationships that matter.

So, From A Corporate Perspective, What Is Twitter Good For?

First, the obvious answer is "getting news out about your company". However, there's more to it than that. I found plenty of corporate Twitter accounts out there, spewing out the predictable press releases.

My impression? Spewing out press releases via a corporate Twitter account is exactly as effective as doing the same from a blog -- that is to say that neither are particularly effective, and both are mildly offensive to my sensibilities.

However, those same press releases and other propaganda are far more effective when brought to others' attentions from well-known members of the Twitter community -- just like it works in the blogging world.

Second, there's real-world brand management going on. I found dozens and dozens of EMCers out there representing EMC well. Say something about EMC, or one of our products (or one of our competitors!) and there'd be a crowd of unofficial EMC brand managers chatting with you before you know it.

This is corporate brand marketing in an entirely new dimension. Many thousands of people are continually forming impressions around you and your company, and it's done in an entirely unstructured and organic manner. For traditional marketeers, this is head-spinning stuff.

As an example, if someone is frustrated with our company or our products, we're (collectively) right there in real time and listening sympathetically if nothing else.

And it's 24x7 -- right now, it's 7AM on a Saturday, and -- yes -- the twitterati are out and about.

Third, there's the infinite network of experts always available. Post a tweet with a question or opinion, and -- before you know it -- people are coming out of the woodwork with either a response, or the name of someone else who can probably help. And this happens in minutes, not hours or days.

If you've never seen or used Twitter, simply go to http://search.twitter.com (or http://www.monitter.com) and type in your favorite search term. Maybe a name or two. You'll be amazed at the results.

Simply put, I now believe you can't ignore Twitter as part of your overall corporate social media strategy. Just like you can't ignore Google.

I had been postponing engaging with Twitter, and I was wrong.

More Context

Originally, I had high hopes for Yammer, which is like Twitter but restricted to people with the same (presumably corporate) email domain address. There's a bit of activity there, but it pales besides the Twitter flood. More going on outside your company than inside your company -- no surprise there.

And then there's "following".

On Twitter, people follow other people. Recommendations are made between friends on who should be followed, and who should be unfollowed. I have now had a Twitter account for something like 24 hours, and I now have 52 followers.

Now, to be fair, I am somewhat of a known identity in the various circles I participate in, so some might not be surprised by this. But each of these followers has a list of people who follow them, and so on. It's an extreme and real-time example of social networking.

Regarding the long-standing complaint that social media behavior can appear as just goofing off -- well, Twitter is addictive and ripe for abuse. Indeed, the "tweeps" (Twitter users) tell me that they've all had to learn how to tame this particular beast.

I'll let you know how I do on this one :-)

The Paradox

Despite that EMC has no formal strategy for Twitter, we're probably one of the more proficient companies in using it well. We have many dozens of unofficial brand managers representing us on the service, we're obviously forming good relationships and having great communication between people inside our company and outside out company.

I couldn't have asked for anything better.

You might ask -- how did this come to be?

Simple -- it was the people.

We have an extended core of "social people" at EMC. They participate vigorously on the internal social platform. They tend to blog proficiently inside and outside of the company. You'll see them leaving comments on other people's blogs and comments. Wherever you go, you'll generally find the same EMCers participating and engaging.

And so, when Twitter (or whatever) comes along, there's really no need for us to do anything. The EMC social people find out about the service, set up shop, and do what they normally do -- engage in discussion.

Shouldn't that be at the heart of any corporate social media strategy? To find, encourage and enlarge your internal group of proficient "social people"? So that -- regardless of the platform or context -- they're out there representing your company well?

As a matter of fact, put this way -- I guess being proficient at Twitter was part of our plan all along!

:-)

Two Approaches To Proficiencytag:typepad.com,2003:post-630043232009-02-18T05:36:55-05:002009-02-18T05:36:55-05:00By now, you've probably figured out that I'm not all that involved in the day-to-day of EMC's social media efforts. I mean, I still know what's going on, I'm just usually the spectator these days. That's good. Frankly speaking, I...Chuck Hollis

By now, you've probably figured out that I'm not all that involved
in the day-to-day of EMC's social media efforts. I mean, I still know
what's going on, I'm just usually the spectator these days.

That's
good. Frankly speaking, I wouldn't want to be the bottleneck in
something so important. At some point, you have to get out of the way,
and let things take on a life of their own.

Thought I'd share
with you two interesting developments on how we're improving our
overall proficiency -- one formal, one informal.

The Importance Of Proficiency

If you've been following
our journey, you'll remember from early on that I made this all about
social media proficiency: that we had to help our employees become
comfortable and proficient at all this social media stuff -- not only
the tools, but the skills, behaviors and attitudes that are
oh-so-important.

Simply being able to know what Twitter does is
one thing; understand the role it plays and how to use it effectively
is quite something else.

The EMC Social Media Club

Yes,
a club for people who are simply interested in all this social media
stuff -- nothing more. Turns out that there are a lot of people who
are curious about all of this hubbub, and they want to learn more
simply by hanging out with people who already do.

I was asked to
speak at the first club meeting, which I did. I gave a quick recap of
how EMC got into all of this, some of the original thinking, and a few
of the big milestones along the way. Got great feedback from many
people that sharing that context was very useful indeed.

As I
watched the commentary on the club's group space, it was pretty clear
there were all sorts of people who were glad that they could connect
with others who were more proficient, ask their newbie questions, and
generally feel supported.

What better way to help overall proficiency than establishing a club or group of like-minded people?

Congrats
to Stu, Jamie and a few others who put this together. I would have
never thought of this on my own, but I'm glad someone did!

Community Development 101

Again,
if you've been following all of this, you'll remember me moaning on
just how hard it was to teach people the basics of community
formation. It's hard, gritty work. It takes a lot of time and
effort. It's not easy, and you need help from others. And so on.

To
this day, we patiently explain to group after group that simply posting
a bunch of crap on a web page with a discussion capability is not a
community; it's a web page with a bunch of crap on it and a discussion
forum.

Our external community team (ECN) had established a nice
methodology for community building a while back. They've got
checklists and guide documents for each phase of the process --
something to behold in and of itself. And it's been quite useful to
point an eager-eyed prototypical community developer to their space and
say "have at it!".

But now they've done one better -- they'd
established coursework and a curriculum for these same prototypical
community developers. You can now actually take a class at EMC on this
topic, and receive a bit of certification in the process.

People
tell me there's strong interest from across the company in taking these
classes. I'm hoping that the people who do the formal educational
stuff at EMC take notice, and offer to make this a formal part of our
professional development curriculum at the company.

Imagine making community development a recommended course for aspiring career professionals at EMC?

That'd be quite cool indeed.

The Journey Continues

I
couldn't have predicted either of these important developments a few
years back when we started focusing on all of this. However, I did
expect that we'd get all sorts of creative and passionate people
involved, and they'd come up with clever ideas and capabilities none of
us early pioneers would ever contemplate.And that's exactly what's happening now.

We've
built a social computer that innovates, and comes up with
self-improving ideas to expand and refine what it does, and how it does
it.

It's absolutely fascinating to watch all this ...

We Just Keep Cruising Alongtag:typepad.com,2003:post-622980502009-02-03T00:32:35-05:002009-02-03T00:32:35-05:00Sorry I haven't updated everyone in a while -- no big news, just a steady stream of good things happening. All of this 2.0 stuff is now so ingrained in everything we do as a company, it's getting harder to...Chuck Hollis

Sorry I haven't updated everyone in a while -- no big news, just a steady stream of good things happening.

All of this 2.0 stuff is now so ingrained in everything we do as a company, it's getting harder to pull out one big thing, or another.

The Internal Platform Continues To Rock

We made it past our upgrade growing pains, and are back to business as usual.

I usually don't have much time these days to go poking around and seeing what people are doing, but -- every time I do -- there's always a wealth of new, and very cool, things going on.

Jamie tells me we're now past 10,000 registered users on the platform -- a third of our employees -- and that's not counting lurkers! People are starting to use the new features (groups, in particular, are turning out to be very popular).

The internal team is being nominated for a President's Award at EMC -- the most prestigious recognition we've got for internal efforts and projects. Even making it to a final round is a really big deal.

Who knows if we'll win or not -- that doesn't really matter -- what does matter is that everyone recognizes the huge impact the internal platform has had on our business and our culture.Good News Every Day

Little cool things jump out all the time. They may not seem earth-shattering, but they happen all the time, and they really add up.

One example I spotted was the "Documentation at EMC" group. Every product group produces documentation at EMC, but work in different parts of the company. The group now includes over 60 people around the globe who take an interest in this topic. And it "just happened", so to speak.

Another example is that we're rolling out a new EMC-developed email archiving package at EMC, which affects each and every one of our email users. We're using the community platform to engage people, provide information, swap tips and generally monitor the temperature.

I think there's one or two of these sorts of minor triumphs each and every week.Our Bloggers Get Recognition

One of the outcomes of our internal platform is that we're routinely graduating external bloggers who blog on behalf of the company. It's quite a roster, and growing every month.

Collectively, they are a force to be reckoned with in our industry. They have introduced new concepts and technologies, swayed market opinion decisively, tormented our competitors, and -- generally -- have reflected well on EMC's brand as a knowledgeable and open company with a sense of humor.

They, too, may be submitted for a President's Award as well.

That would be very cool, if you think about it.Our External Meta-Community Goes Live

A while back, I described how we wanted to take our learnings from internal social media proficiency, and go external in a thoughtful and measured way.

We wanted a repeatable process that could handle literally hundreds of EMC-affiliated communities (yes, we're that broad), but still provide some coherency and navigation.

Well, that too has gone live. It's not as populated with sub-communities as I'd like, but you can see how the framework will flex and expand over time as we launch 2 or 3 new communities per month.

Congrats to the external team (ECN) -- fine work, indeed!

And maybe you too will be nominated for a President's Award next year!

Final Thoughts

All of this is happening without too much involvement from me anymore.

The teams know what to do, and how to do it. We've achieved critical mass in most regards, we just have to keep executing and adapting to new opportunities. I'm off working on other things these days.

In one sense, I have no small sense of pride that we've achieved what we set out to do -- transform our company around 2.0 and social media.

The journey is hardly over -- it never is -- but we are well on our way!

Extending The Discussiontag:typepad.com,2003:post-609936562009-01-07T10:10:24-05:002009-01-07T10:10:24-05:00I love blogging. Your sweat and you write and you post -- and every so often you get the chance to have a detailed conversation with someone you'd never ordinarily engage with. Such is the case today -- I came...Chuck Hollis

I love blogging. Your sweat and you write and you post -- and every so often you get the chance to have a detailed conversation with someone you'd never ordinarily engage with.

Such is the case today -- I came to work and found myself scrolling through a multi-page thoughtful comment from John Tropea.

Rather than responding with another multi-page comment, I decided to put the discussion in a post, and respond (hopefully) conversationally.

John writes:

Hi Chuck, I have posted about top-down CoP creation, which seems to be in contrast to your bottom-up creation???...

Yes, that's true, we've strived to create an incubation environment where people (with a bit of effort and support) can create their own communities. We took this approach for a couple of reasons, (1) we've got a sprawlingly diverse organization, so any top-down initiative would struggle, (2) we believe that the ability for motivated individuals to form communities is a key social media proficiency skill, and (3) we like any approach that doesn't require an inordinate amount of work on our part :-)

I'm gathering at EMC|ONE that people can create their own communities (I'm refering to page 21 of your paper) But I'm not so sure, as I recall an earlier blog post of yours referring to a community request form (actually we based our form on this)...is this still the case? (as this would make it top-down creation)

Yep, it's still the case. The "request form" was nothing more than a speed bump to encourage people to think a bit about what they were doing, and how they were going to do it. If you're sufficiently motivated, you'll fill out the form and peruse some of the guidelines and best practices. If you're not sufficiently motivated, you won't make the effort. And that's how it worked out.

With our latest Clearspace platform upgrade, we now have "groups" which are entirely self-serve and are more informal than communities. Lots of action there, I tell you.

On one hand I like the idea of bottom-up creation because if people see the "create" button they will do it. Instead if they have to request a community they may never get round to it (time and formality is an obstacle) Also if they do it themselves they may be more inclined to create small groups, rather than feeling communities are a formal and large thing.

Agreed. We wanted people to put a bit of thought into communities and design for more scale -- so an entirely self-serve model wouldn't have done that. But -- not to be exclusionary -- the newer group function is entirely self serve.

For me, it's all about setting expectations: communities are a bit more formal, structured and purpose-oriented. Groups are more informal, unstructured, freewheeling and social.

There are so many work emails I come across about pilots, fixing a process initiative, etc...and these people are using email rather than a CoP. I feel they may use a CoP if they did not have to wait and go through a formal process, and rather just create them themselves. In saying this our CoPs are not very task oriented like Basecamp, even though they have the same tools (blogs, forums), Basecamp is designed for tasks. Does Clearspace handle tasks well?

We are slowly starting to wean ourselves off of email, but it will be a long journey. For us, groups fill the need of quick-and-dirty social spaces that don't have to be persistent. Although Clearspace supports the notion of tasks, we have elected not to use it. Mostly, we see our efforts focused around connecting people and starting discussions, and not putting them on a task management treadmill!

Don't forget, we also have self-serve SharePoint and eRoom and file shares at EMC. Bazillions of them. The trick is to expose the conversation to others who may be outside the tight circle, hence the "no private communities" mandate at the outset.

You mention overlapping CoPs and that those CoPs can work it out on their own and merge. As Dave Snowden says it's better to have a few CoPs on the same topic if it means people feel confident to share, compared to a bigger CoP where they don't trust each other, even though it's the same topic...people like to have their own comfortable house and crew to hang out with.

One caveat is, if it's a Business unit(team) using a CoP, then there should only be one CoP for this. We feel if people create their own we will be littered with inactive CoPs due to people not knowing how to use them.

We have a mix of both -- some communities are clearly business unit driven, others are more overlapping. In larger organizations, you'll probably have both. Just so you know, we had a few business units that insisted on the top down approach and didn't execute, leaving several informal communities carrying the load, so to speak.

We could mitigate these with putting them in an inactive directory (to separate them from the rest). Then our job would be to monitor new CoPs, and say "we noticed you created a CoP, let's set up a meeting so we can set you on the right path on how to use the tools, best structure your community, and how to facilitate and sustain a community (people need time and passion to run a community)." At the moment we are having this discussion (along with the request form) before the CoP is created. Then we create it and give them tips to run a pilot, so it gives them time to learn the tools, and populate it before they open up.

Yes, but we have found this incredibly resource intensive -- just one community can consume many hours of patient discussion and feedback over many weeks. For example, we've got close to 200 communities, and if you do the math, you're talking 5-7 people that do nothing but this, which is an unlikely investment scenario.

We elected to create a "heat map" of high-impact communities to spend our time on; and leave others on their own, so to speak.

What I like about our creation approach (top-down)is that before the community is created a lot of things have been thought out on structure and scaling, the last thing we want to do is merge and split CoPs later, as migration is a headache. It's also gives them a good chance for adoption the first time, as sometimes you don't get a second time.

You and I share the same concerns, but we might differ philisophically. We wanted to learn from the journey -- making mistakes, celebrating successes. We explicitly resisted the temptation to over-organize and over-control how communities were formed, grown and rationalized. Not everyone is up for that sort of controlled chaos, though.

The only reason I would encourage bottom-up creation is that we would see more informal CoPs, as the user can instantly create one with a click. Our task would be then to have a meeting immediately so we can set them on the right path. Perhaps this is a good hybrid...bottom-up creation (empowering the user), but then catch them as soon as they come out the gate. Not sure how viable this is if too many CoPs get created to keep up with.

Well, in our environment, there was so much activity that we couldn't keep up. The groups concept seems to be working well for us so far, in effect elevating communities to more formal constructs that require a bit more rationalization, focus, and so on.

With top-down creation we may be a bottle neck (slower creation, or no creation-as people decide to request another day, but never do), but at least the CoP is thought through, comprehended and started off on the right foot. Right now our CoP platform is not as easy to create as a Facebook group, it's a bit more robust, so the design has also led us down the top-down creation.

All I would suggest is that your team not get too wedded to their way. We made a bunch of initial assumptions -- some of them were right, some of them were wrong. What I think held us back was the natural human tendency to enforce rigidty and discipline at the expense of being responsive to people's needs. Every assumption, guideline and procedure should be up for debate as you progress.

When Your Corporate Social Platform Becomes Mission Criticaltag:typepad.com,2003:post-601372722008-12-17T13:13:17-05:002008-12-17T13:13:17-05:00Life is full of learning experiences, and we had one yesterday. A minor patch to our environment exposed underlying database corruption, which resulted in our internal social platform being unavailable for almost a full business day. The backups? They were...Chuck Hollis

Life is full of learning experiences, and we had one yesterday.

A minor patch to our environment exposed underlying database corruption, which resulted in our internal social platform being unavailable for almost a full business day.

The backups? They were corrupt as well.

Thanks to the exceptional effort of everyone involved, nothing significant was really lost.

Sure, there are lessons to be learned on proper support practices for important applications (and our social platform is now one of those), but there are other lessons to be learned as well.

First, A Bit Of Perspective

I've been selling to mission-critical IT environments for most of my adult career.

I understand what can happen, how it happens, and what should be done about it. I am probably not as expert as someone who actually *runs* a mission-critical IT shop, but I'm close enough.

And, believe me, in terms of "bad IT days", data corruption is one of the biggies. Especially if your backups have the same problem. Usually -- unless superhero efforts are applied -- this means that you're gonna lose some data. Thankfully, we didn't lose too much.

All day long, it was hard for many of us to get business done, simply because the platform wasn't available. It was pretty much in the same league as "email unavailable".

So, at what point did this social platform go from "nice to have" to "need to have"? There wasn't a defined point that I can see, it just kind of snuck up on us.

People were resilient, and adapted -- that's what we all do anyway. But it was a huge impact to a lot of people's workday, and didn't do anything to help with establishing confidence around the platform.#2 -- At Some Point, Declare Your Social Platform As Mission Critical

We didn't do that.

As a result, we didn't get the same operational procedures that EMC's top-tier applications get. I'm *not* blaming the IT guys -- they have a schema as to how they categorize things, and our application wasn't in the appropriate tier.

Why does that matter? More scrutiny and extra effort is applied to make sure that the application is always available -- and usually at significant additional cost.

snapping off disk copies of your database and running consistency checks before it goes to tape or other backup device

HA failover of servers, storage -- or even physical locations!

Maintenance at off-hours, rather than prime time

Well, now we have a case to do elevate the category, so to speak.

And probably a willingness to spend more $$$ to keep this from happening again.

#3 -- Vendors In This Space Will Need To Revisit Their Processes

EMC sells mission-critical hardware and software for a living. We know what top-tier customer support looks like -- it's an integral part of our business.

You never can get good enough at this stuff, trust me.

Now, we're not blaming anyone here, but I think it's safe to say that we were exercising our software vendor's support processes in a very unique and unexpected manner. We had 10,000+ users down, and things were pretty bleak there for a while.

Everyone pitched in and helped once an emergency was declared, but it was pretty clear that it was an immature process, relatively speaking.

If you're a vendor in this space, and you're convincing customers that your product is essential to their business, and your customer does what you told them to do and now has their entire company running on your stuff, you're going to have to start thinking like a mission-critical vendor, and invest appropriately.

Everything breaks now and then -- it's what technology does.

What can't break are the service and support processes: problem escalation, expert triage, advanced notice of potential problem areas, proactive preventative fixes ... the whole ball of wax.

I've Seen This Movie Before

I've been talking to IT shops for a very long time, and I'm thinking back to five or so years ago when I was trying to convince them that email wasn't a "nice to have" anymore, it was becoming a "need to have".

From a technology perspective, that meant things like having enough performance, ensuring continuous availability, guarding against application or data corruption, archiving and retention strategies, making email available to mobile users, securing the environment, etc.

Most people thought I was crazy at the time. A few listened, though. But that's the world we now live in with corporate email.

Funny -- that sounds like just the same list of things we're gonna have to do with our social platform.

A Big Upgradetag:typepad.com,2003:post-597467122008-12-09T10:01:56-05:002008-12-09T10:01:56-05:00At the end of last week, we upgraded to Clearspace 2.5x. Wow! We have a plethora of cool new features, and a spiffy new skinning as well. I wanted to share a screen shot with you, simply because it came...Chuck Hollis

At the end of last week, we upgraded to Clearspace 2.5x. Wow!

We have a plethora of cool new features, and a spiffy new skinning as well. I wanted to share a screen shot with you, simply because it came out so gorgeous.

Congrats to Jamie, Len and the rest of the team who sweated all the gory details (not to be shared here!), and gave us such a wonderful social platform to use!

(click for expanded view)

Giving Back, And A Request For Helptag:typepad.com,2003:post-597462562008-12-09T09:52:44-05:002008-12-09T09:52:44-05:00Hi everyone! We've been asked over and over again for some sort of white paper overview on our whole social media proficiency experience. Well, I've finally taken the time to write one. It's not perfect, but maybe you could help...Chuck Hollis

Hi everyone!

We've been asked over and over again for some sort of white paper overview on our whole social media proficiency experience.

Well, I've finally taken the time to write one.

It's not perfect, but maybe you could help to make it better?

CAVEATS

Every document needs a use case. Here's the one I have in mind.

Typically, I'm talking to an IT group about various technology topics. I touch on what we're doing here with social media proficiency, and they really want to talk about it. It'd be nice to send them some sort of writeup or guidebook as to what we did and how we did it.

Some things to keep in mind?

First, it's a DRAFT. There are no pictures, graphs, footnotes, references, etc. I bet there are some typos as well.

Second, if you just want to download this and put it to use, feel free. I'd appreciate a note in the comments from you with any general reactions and/or uses you plan to put it to.

Third, if you REALLY want to help, please dissect it. Imagine you're working for a large organization, you want to do this whole social media proficiency thing, and you're reading this white paper. What would you add? What would you delete? What would you change or improve?

Finally, I'd appreciate it if everyone would respect EMC's copyright here. Linking to this post and/or document is AOK, but please don't redistribute without permission.

Those Who Talk vs. Those Who Dotag:typepad.com,2003:post-587551422008-11-19T17:57:57-05:002008-11-19T17:57:57-05:00Sorry, I need to get something off my chest. And I may alienate a portion of the community in doing so. But -- well -- something needs to be said. There Are A Lot Of Experts Out There Like any...Chuck Hollis

Sorry, I need to get something off my chest.

And I may alienate a portion of the community in doing so.

But -- well -- something needs to be said.

There Are A Lot Of Experts Out There

Like any hot topic, there are many people out there offering expertise on the whole 2.0 thing: social media, social networking, social computing, whatever.

And, occasionally, I go surfing the chatter-sphere to see what people are talking about. Like most surfing, you find a few bits are interesting, with a whole lotta "meh".

I do appreciate those brave souls who have hung out their consulting shingle and tried to make a living on helping companies make the transition.

I think that those of you who follow this blog and this journey realize we've rolled up our sleeves, and made an amazing amount of progress in a very short time -- due to a combination of some very talented and passionate people, and a corporate culture that can evolve much faster than most people realize.

But -- really -- to take our approach to task and say "we don't get it" or "we're missing it" or "what we really don't understand" or "we did it all wrong" and otherwise lambaste us for what we're doing?

I would favorably compare our practical organizational knowledge and methodologies on what we've learned to many of the "experts" out there -- especially those who haven't had the privilege of actually doing this sort of corporate transformation on a large scale over a sustained period of time.

We live in the real world. And all the theory and research and opinion doesn't mean much unless you figure out a way to apply it to a real-world company with real-world challenges.

I have been very open and transparent about our journey and experiences here. Warts and all. My hope is that I can inspire and help others who are on a similar journey. Understand our thinking, learn from our successes and failures -- and get to where you're going faster and with less stress.

But, in doing so, I'm finding that -- as is often true in public forums -- I've created a convenient target for people who want to take their shots for whatever reason. There's not many of them, but I think it's a problem that I want to nip in the bud.

I understand that a key part of securing consulting business is pointing out shortcomings in what your prospective client is doing -- that much I get. And, trust me, I am quite aware of several areas where we could be faster/better in all of this.

But, in the act of sharing negativity, you're dissuading others from starting and sharing their journeys as well. I see it corroding and polluting the collective commons.

We all want to live in a world where e2.0 is the norm, and not the exception.

So, let's be positive out there, shall we?

And, if you insist on being negative, pray that you don't end up on an industry panel that includes me as a guest speaker.

A Really Open Conversationtag:typepad.com,2003:post-586339282008-11-17T17:01:19-05:002008-11-17T17:01:19-05:00I said that I'd share with you various stories as we learn to use our social media capabilities in new and interesting ways. Well, one of those situations are upon us now. And, truth be told, we're handling it pretty...Chuck Hollis

I said that I'd share with you various stories as we learn to use our social media capabilities in new and interesting ways.

Well, one of those situations are upon us now. And, truth be told, we're handling it pretty well.

You see, we're using our internal platform to help communicate less-than-positive news internally.

As The Economy Slows

Like any other company, we're tightening up the belt a bit as we head into a most decidedly unpredictable economic environment.

But, this time around, we've got our internal platform EMC|ONE. And we're using it in some pretty interesting ways to share the news, discuss it, and -- hopefully -- get back to business sooner than later.

Spontaneous Vs. Planned

The first memo came out in a traditional way -- there was a minor change to our vacation policy to keep the amount of carryover vacation down to a manageable number. Not a big deal in the broader scheme of things, at least the way I think about these things.

But a couple of spontaneous discussions emerged on the internal platform, right out there for everyone to see. A few people were (ahem) rather pointed in their thoughts about this particular change in vacation policy.

Some people were quite upset regarding the inconvenience involved -- they had made plans far in advance, which were now impacted. Others had particular work-related situations that didn't make it easy to burn off enough vacation in time -- they were concerned about losing a valuable benefit. Still others felt free to spout off a bit -- ill-advised in any public setting, but there you had it.

All very valid concerns.

Before too long, we had over 10,000 views on the threads, and hundreds of comments. Over time, though, more moderate voices joined the discussion, and softly rebuked some of the more vocal participants.

These more moderate people said that the economy was getting tough, and the company needed to look at every reasonable avenue for lowering expenses. If this meant a small change in the vacation policy, fine -- better than some of the alternatives.

Fine, came back the collective response -- then the communication should have been worded with this in mind. Be open and transparent, they said -- don't try to whitewash the situation. The executives in charge of the policy (formation and communciation) got to see this all unfold in realtime before their eyes -- warts and all.

Very useful feedback, I might offer ...

A Moment Of Truth

You know, this sort of experience can be thought of as a "moment of truth" in any social media journey.

You wanted an open discussion -- well, you've got one! Now, what are you going to do about it?

Seriously, though, the company's management would have been well within their rights to yank the whole discussion right then and there. But -- no -- we all found this extremely fascinating.

And the discussion turned to "how do we use this platform to help communicate going forward?"

The Business Driver(s)

Look, any time you have to share disruptive news with your workforce, there's an inherent disruption.

People want to ask questions, discuss among themselves, share perspectives. It's a natural human reaction -- you have to process things a bit before you can get back to work.

Well, using the online platform, we seem to be getting through that introspection phase far faster than before. Anyone can see the memo, and what everyone else has already said about it. Anyone can leave their thoughts and concerns as well -- all in about 3 minutes flat.

No need to wander around the building, finding people to talk to. Or getting on the phone to discuss this with your friends. Or to immediately schedule a meeting with your manager to discuss pronto.

Sure, there are people who are going to want to do some of this traditional processing, but -- as of today -- the online platform is where people appear to be doing the majority of this "processing" -- and it's all there for everyone to see -- including our executive management.

Finally, executive communications is not a precise art. Getting realtime feedback on how you did in crafting the message is valuable feedback for any executive. And you can find out pretty quickly just how well you did, and how to do better next time.

If you want to, that is :-)

Being Thoughtful

So, based on that spontaneous experience, we're going to be trying a few new things in the future. We'd like to integrate the use of the platform into the broader communication experience.

First, we're going to proactively "start the discussion". When a potentially controversial memo comes out, we're going to post in on the platform, and explicitly invite people to discuss.

Second, we're going to be as tolerant as we can be when people feel like venting a bit -- and then gently reminding them privately if they're being a bit too, well, passionate :-)

Third, we're going to spend a little time and summarize the more interesting themes back to exec management -- here's what people are saying that we think is valid, go to this link if you want to see it all unfiltered.

The Bottom Line

It's funny -- having a social platform ingrained in your company culture is changing how we do things. I can remember a time not too long ago where this sort of thing would be entirely out of the question.

But now it seems like the most natural thing to do -- invite people into the discussion.

This stuff isn't about technology, it's about changing the way you do business.

And this seems like a perfect example to me.

An Object Lesson On The Value Of Social Media Proficiencytag:typepad.com,2003:post-582930902008-11-10T10:45:56-05:002008-11-10T10:45:56-05:00I still see many companies out there furiously searching for the magical "ROI" that will create the case for investing in social media proficiency. Cynically, though, the very fact that they're looking for an ROI silver bullet that will somehow...Chuck Hollis

I still see many companies out there furiously searching for the magical "ROI" that will create the case for investing in social media proficiency.

Cynically, though, the very fact that they're looking for an ROI silver bullet that will somehow magically convince naysayers and other risk-adverse types is an oxymoron in itself, IMHO.

So, let me share the news. Today, we used our social media machine to accomplish something big and visible that we just couldn't have done any other way.

A Bit Of EMC Context ...

EMC makes advanced technology products and services that help people manage information better.

Like any high-tech company, we spend a lot of money on R+D, occasionally coming up with entirely new concepts in the industry. As an example, this morning, we publicly announced an entirely new form of "cloud optimized storage" that represents some seriously progressive thinking.

But it's one thing to come up with something revolutionary, it's another thing to tell everyone about it in such a way that you extract full economic value.

I used to run EMC's product marketing group many years ago, and -- back then -- when we came up with something very new and interesting, the only real channel we had to "spread the news" was to issue a press release, and then schedule days of concalls with reporters and analysts in the hopes that they'd agree with us on what we found so interesting, and write a short piece on the topic.

I did this more times than I care to remember.

Since these people were the only game around for getting the news out, they could be indifferent or difficult or obstinate in how they treated your "news". Fail to convince them that the world cared about this topic, or scratch their back in some other way, and you'd fail to accomplish your objectives.

All that investment in R+D and innovation failing to get properly monetized simply because you couldn't do a good job of getting the word out. From a business person's perspective, that really sucked.

Things are different now.

Using EMC's Blogging Corps

We've now got a small army of EMC bloggers who are very proficient outside the firewall. They write well, cover things from an interesting perspective, and are each "followed" by many in the industry.

We made sure they were pre-briefed on the announcement, and had access to internal materials that weren't part of the general announcement.

We made the product teams directly available for the bloggers to interview and ask questions.

We "teased" the marketplace by putting clues and bread crumbs out there without giving away the whole story.

We internally circulated drafts of our proposed posts to make sure they were somewhat accurate, consistent and non-overlapping.

All of this happened rather organically and naturally. There wasn't a lot of drama and anxiety.

The results?

Perhaps one of the most effective "big idea" launches I've seen anywhere in our industry, ever.

Completely unachievable with a "1.0" approach, I might add. Even if we spent the money to rent a big auditorium, flew people in for the day, etc. -- it would not have been anywhere as effective as what we did, period.

Yes, the engineering team came up with the "big idea" and made it a deliverable product. But our new approach to getting the word out made that investment pay off much better and much faster than ever before.

Looking for ROI?

The existence of our EMC blogging corps was probably worth tens of millions of dollars for this one event, and achieved a level of impact that couldn't be done even if we could have spent all that money.

How Did This Come To Be?

Easy.

We thought having a cadre of effective external bloggers was damn important, and we invested in getting what we thought we needed.

No one thing, a lot of little things:

We made it "OK" to blog externally. We created external blogging guidelines (not "rules" or "policy") in the input of our bloggers.

We created a lightweight governance function in the event that our guidelines needed clarification or application to a particular circumstance.

We created an internal support group of people who were either blogging externally, or wanted to. We gave people encouragement and coaching.

We asked our PR organization to embrace and leverage our external bloggers, and change how they did things sliightly.

We gave people an internal platform to practice (EMC|ONE) their blogging skills in a safe environment.

The bloggers brought the passion and expertise, though.

We just harnessed it.

A Retrospect

All of the above has been in place for a while. It's now a natural part of how we do business in the marketing world. We know it's there, and how to use it effectively. Since I'm at the center of all of this, it's nice to read another perspective.

And none of us can imagine getting things done without it.

Convergence with the 1.0 Worldtag:typepad.com,2003:post-581294142008-11-06T15:14:12-05:002008-11-06T15:14:12-05:00As we move along in our journey, I'm pleased to share with you the harder questions we have to wrestle with, how we're making our decisions, and how it all turns out -- for better or worse. No one has...Chuck Hollis

As we move along in our journey, I'm pleased to share with you the harder questions we have to wrestle with, how we're making our decisions, and how it all turns out -- for better or worse.

No one has written the definitive book on this stuff (yet!), so we all should feel free to use our best collective judgment in deciding to go one way or another.

And now, we're getting to a very interesting discussion on this whole "2.0 vs. 1.0" thing.

I don't have any answers yet, but it's turning out to be interesting, to say the least.

Our Story So Far

So, to recap our story so far, we built our internal social computing platform over a year ago (EMC|ONE), and it's cruising along. More to do there, but all goodness.

About 4 months ago, we formed a group to accelerate the formation of external communities, but maintain a certain loose coherence to things. That's coming along very nicely as well, all things considered.

Outside of GE and a few others, EMC is probably on a short list of companies that's really putting this social stuff to work in a meaningful and business-transforming way. It's being done with intent and focus, which is a nice way to do things.

We now have two related pillars to our 2.0 strategy -- internal and external. Both are important. Both are related. But they're run by completely different teams, using completely different methodologies, requiring completely different skills, and on distinctly different platforms (albeit with common technology, e.g. Clearspace).

Why? They're solving very different problems. Based on what we now know, there'd be no way in hell that I'd ever foolishly attempt to solve the internal and external 2.0 thing using a common team, common platform, common methodoligies, etc.

Some may look at that and say "well, that's inefficent, there's got to be some redundancy there that you haven't taken out yet". Spoken like a true engineer. But, I would counter, look where we are and how fast we got there, and how well it's all working.

Why would I risk all of that in some foolhardy effort to squeeze another 10% out of the equation?

Remember that specific thought in a few paragraphs.

Here Comes The 1.0 World

So, like most companies, we have our own uber-repository that supports all sorts of business functions: sales people, support people, partners, employees, etc. Ours is called Powerlink.

Like most companies, we spend a lot of corporate money on this platform. Like most similar platforms, it ends up serving everyone, and generally pleasing almost no one.

And, in the big scheme of things, it's time to go re-invent (again) what this corporate content portal is all about. That's good -- the timing is right, and we're much smarter about this sort of thing than we used to be.

Not surprisingly, the team is wrestling with two very important and very strategic challenges that are interrelated. And I thought you'd like to understand what they are, because you may be at this exact same place in your journey before too long.

The Architectural Challenge

I don't know what it is about how most people think about these things, but the natural tendency seems to be to do what you essentially did before (architecturally speaking, that is), but somehow just "fix" what you got wrong the last time.

Imagine you don't like the house you live in: the kitchen's too small, the ceilings are too low, there aren't enough bedrooms, there's no real place for the kids to play, etc.

Some people embark on extended renovation projects to "improve" what's basically an inadequate architectural design. Others are smarter about the problem and go looking for a house that's architected around their needs.

This simple human behavior from the real world seems to have difficulty translating into the software world, or so I'm finding. I guess the word "architecture" scares people off -- it's nothing more than a set of design principles and segmentation of function.

So, not surprisingly, most people associated with this "new 1.0 efforts" are thinking about improving the house they're already living in, rather than what they might want in a new house.

This will lead us inevitably to some sort of massive uber-database, with some massive uber-portal user interface, and all sorts of uber-process to get things into, and out of, this 1.0 repository.

I am one of the lone voices in the wilderness, it seems.

A Suggested Architecture?

I see this as potentially being a simple, but elegant architecture.

Here are all the places where content comes from. They are owned by different parts of the business, which control what goes in, and what comes out. These parts of the business are responsible for labelling the content they want to share, so we know who can see what, and what it might need.

More and more of these content sources are becoming external, right? Think filtered RSS feeds with attention management. "Google Alerts" is my most recent favorite ...

Most importantly, the content repositories are NOT part of this project scope. They exist, and must be interacted with, but they are not "owned" by the project team.

Consider, just for a moment, the impact of the above statements above in a large, complex organization. Imagine trying to dictate a single place where all useful content lived, or a single process for getting things in and out, or defined taxonomies, etc.

Come to think of it, that's what we tried the last time, and we're certainly not happy with the results :-)

Above that layer, there's a metadata layer that normalizes and abstracts the content sources below it. Differences in labelling and semantics are captured here. You don't need to know where the information might live to use it. Of course, there's search, collections, filtering, tags, etc. There's a static view (here's what I have) and an RSS view (here's what's new).

Over on the right hand side, there's an authentication engine. It can support multiple concurrent authentication and access models, understands the concepts of inheretance, can deal with ambiguity, etc. etc. Most importantly, it's a service -- when it's time to determine whether someone can see something or not, it's asked for its opinion.

Specifically, it is not embedded in other layers.

Going up the stack, there's a corporate mash-up layer. Here's where we construct composite views of what pre-defined personas and roles should see. There's a lightweight workflow engine to suggest changes to what's being seen, review, approve and publish.

If I was being fancy, here's where I would put the analytic capture and analysis components -- who's looking at what, and so on.

At the top, there's the user presentation layer. It works on desktops, and it works on smartphones with sufficient browser resolution. Not everyone will want to customize the appearance, but you can if you want to. Eventually, user mashups will become more popular, and people will want to publish and share "their" views.

Finally, since I care greatly about such things, there's a service delivery layer. The more complex the environment, the more important it is to have an end-to-end view of end-user performance experience. And, yes, I see this an integral piece of the architecture, just like authentication management.

It doesn't "just happen".

Now, I'm too lazy to draw this up on a powerpoint, but I hope this verbal description gave you an 80% view of what a next-gen 1.0 uber-portal / uber-repository architecture might look like.

Now, Let's Layer In The Previous 2.0 Discussion, Shall We?

I mentioned previously that we had two "2.0" pillars up and running already: internal and external.

And, creating great agita for me, is the thought that we combine all of this "2.0" stuff into a single uber-platform that does it all. I wince over and over again as I think of different reasons why this would be a Really Bad Thing To Even Foolishly Attempt.

At the same time, I know how people tend to think. And I also have had plenty of demonstrations of how large companies sometimes get into really bad situations simply because it was the "consensus view" at the time.

So I'm taking this line of thinking very seriously, indeed.

Now, let's consider the 1.0 architecture I described above. If you think about it, pretty easy to layer in the 2.0 content and interactions, no?

Given The Above Architecture, It Works Both Ways

I am either very deluded or very excited that a variant of the above architecture works both ways.

From a 1.0 perspective, social content becomes just another content type. It's searchable as to what's already there, and what's new in terms of RSS feeds. It's mashable at either the corporate level or the user level. A common authentication mechanism ensures that there's a consistent way to deal with people, rights and access.

Really interested in the discussion you're seeing? Click here, you're in, we know who you are!

From a 2.0 perspective, this works as well. All 1.0 content is exposable and mashable as part of the social and/or community experience. You have extended content search capabilities as well, not usually found in the typical 2.0 environment.

What Are The Big Ideas Here?

First, uber-thinking (from an architectural view) is extremely dangerous stuff. The corporate application world learned years ago to decouple functionality, and build things in architectual layers and pieces.

I'd hate to learn that lesson all over again in the "1.0 meets 2.0" domain.

Second, there is no "right experience". Just as there is no "right taxonomy", "right tag cloud" and so on. It's all based on what the user wants to see, and when they want to see it.

And users have this way of changing their preferences, so you better be dynamic.

Third, not to oversimplify, there are probably a couple of "poles" we can think about. There are users that are looking for content, but wouldn't mind being exposed to relevant discussions (a content-centric experience). And there are users looking for discussions that wouldn't mind being exposed to relevant content (a conversational-centric experience).

Fine, create a presentation / composition / mashup layer that can do both, ok? Even if you have to use different tools to do it.

Fourth, let's not think in terms of Really Massive IT Projects. I, for one, would be happy with a small team that prototypes a few architectural concepts, tries them out with a few target users, and learns from the experience, rather than a typical waterfall IT project approach.

Because if we do take a traditional path, I think it's going to be really, really ugly.

It's Always Been Here -- Hasn't It?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-580247782008-11-04T18:58:44-05:002008-11-04T18:58:44-05:00Had the experience of meeting a relatively new employee at EMC the other day -- she had been here for less than a year. I mentioned that I was sorta involved in our internal and external proficiency efforts, including the...Chuck Hollis

Had the experience of meeting a relatively new employee at EMC the other day -- she had been here for less than a year.

I mentioned that I was sorta involved in our internal and external proficiency efforts, including the EMC|ONE platform, and I came away with some new insights that were a bit surprising.

Just Part Of The Landscape?

This person shared with me that it was great working at a company where these sorts of internal communities were an ingrained part of the culture, had been here for a long time, etc.

I stopped her, and explained that our internal platform was relatively new -- it had only been up for a few months when she joined the company. And there was a time not too long ago when there was serious doubt that we'd ever do anything like this.

She was surprised in return -- she thought that the maturity of the environment and the level of engagement pointed to something that had been around for a very long time indeed.

I look at the internal platform, and I see a brand new capability that's just getting out of its childhood. She looks at it as a "senior citizen" with the wisdom of the ages.

Somewhere here there's an important insight that I'm probably missing -- this stuff is most effective when it's "just there", so to speak. There's nothing special or unqiue about it -- it's just another business tool at everyone's disposal, and you're expected to use it effectively and efficiently.

That got me to thinking.

I reflected that in the last few months I hadn't had a single "what's this new platform?" conversation. People now just seem to know what the platform does, what it doesn't do, how to use it, how not to use it, and so forth.

Did it all really happen in about a year?

Yes.

Cruising Around

I spent about an hour today digging through all the various conversations on the platform, just to get a sense of what's going on.

Lots of organizations are now writing regular blog posts on what they're doing, where they need help, soliciting opinions on various matters, and so on. It's all out there if you want to see it.

Now that I think of it, I haven't read a boring status report in quite a while. So that behavior has definitely changed.

Dozens and dozens of threads on cross-functional planning and organizing. People sharing views of the problem and the challenges, debating where to start, who should be engaged, offering up helpful suggestions, floating strawmen proposals, and so on.

Now that I think of it, I haven't been to one of those train-wreck let's-get-organized meetings in quite some time. So that behavior is changing as well.

All sorts of dialogue about conversations with customers, competitors, partners, analysts, etc. Lots of people hear something interesting that applies to our business in some way, and they're sharing what they think and have heard.

I don't think the CIA operates as effectively as we do now in this regard. Or, maybe they do? Anyway, if you want some ground-level intelligence on most any topic, it's there for the reading. That's cool.

More importantly, a few major new products are going through their lifecycle using the internal community model. We're talking 100% openness on product features, limitations, bugs and their fixes, go-to-market plans, pricing proposals, launch specifics, positioning, etc. etc. etc.

Now, if you've ever worked at a technology company, you know that all of that stuff is usually locked away and kept away from your sales force until it's "ready".

But, interestingly enough, demand for these specific products is already relatively strong, even though they haven't been formally launched, simply because the sales force could follow the evolution, and be confident that there was a real team behind the new offering.

Openness not only speeds getting the product to market, but also speeds initial engagement by your field organization!

Something I didn't expect, but it's extremely cool when you think about the economic impact of that one. Because, with new products, it's all about time-to-revenue, isn't it?

Another Milestone?

I'm always mindful of key milestones and achievements on this journey we're taking. Call them signposts that show you how far you've come, and how far you have yet to go.

I think I can identify another milestone we've reached -- our internal social platform is becoming as ubiquitous and useful as, say, email. It seems like it's always been there. You're just expected to be able to use it effectively. We can't imagine a time when it wasn't there.

How quickly we as human beings adapt to the new "normal"!

And we're no longer surprised by all the clever things people are doing with it.

Tough Times Accelerate Cultural Change?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-573402592008-10-21T09:38:00-04:002008-10-21T09:38:00-04:00No surprise, it looks like we're headed for a sustained period of tough economic times. The hurricane has blown through, metaphorically speaking. Now it's many long months of cleanup and getting back to normal, or maybe redefining what "normal" might...Chuck Hollis

No surprise, it looks like we're headed for a sustained period of tough economic times.

The hurricane has blown through, metaphorically speaking. Now it's many long months of cleanup and getting back to normal, or maybe redefining what "normal" might be.

But there might be a silver lining to this economic storm.

A Quick Recap

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know we're on a journey towards social media proficiency.

We've had our internal platform up for over a year, and we now have all sorts of external communities heading towards our external platform group.

But -- challengingly -- not enough people have been "thinking differently" about how to get things done.

Sure, we can revel in many successes. But against a vast backdrop of people, behaviors and legacy business processes, we've only just begun.

Forcing The Situation

It's very likely that my company, like many, will be rethinking its budgets for 2009.

There probably won't be a lot of budget for "expensive" stuff: in-person forums, face-to-face meetings, slick advertising and the like.

There's been no official mandate in this regard yet. But smart business managers (mostly those in the marketing world) can sense the change of economic seasons, and are looking around for more cost-effective mechanisms for reaching and engaging with the outside world.

Besides, even if we can afford a nice event in a nice venue, who can afford to attend?

Randy (who runs our external community group) tells me his phone is ringing off the hook. All sorts of internal groups are coming out of the woodwork, interested in the idea of a near-zero-cost mechanism for achieving their marketing and engagement goals outside the company.

The good news? As a result, we're accelerating change.

The challenges? None of these new groups are especially proficienct at what it takes to design, build and launch an external community. More problematic, they bring a host of pre-conceived notions about what they think they want, how they think they're going about doing it.

It's not that they don't know anything, it's what they think they know turns out to be incorrect.

All of this can be fixed through patient conversation and engagement. But that takes time, and that takes application of very scarce internal resources. So Randy is prioritizing ruthlessly.

Aggressive prioritization has its challenges as well. Certain groups may feel they're not being taken care of adequately, which may create the conditions for them feeling they can go off and do their own thing. Which, of course, defeats the logic of a centralized external community function to accelerate proficiency and maintain some coherency.

But it's a good problem to have, all things considered. Rather than selling the idea of external communities, we're responding to unprecendented demand. And, having been a marketing guy for many years, I'd rather have too much demand rather than too little :-)

Time On Your Hands?

There's been a recent surge of activity on the internal platform as well.

I can't exactly explain it, but one theory is people having a bit of extra time on their hands. Reduced travel expenditures means less time travelling. Fewer big initiatives are being worked on (economic picture being uncertain and all), so there's no traditional outlet for people who like to work on new stuff.

I think there's also a basic human need to reconnect with people when the weather is cold outside. I see all sorts of new conversations springing up, and new levels of participation in older ones.

It's All About Accelerating Change, Isn't It?

Way back when we started on this journey, we saw this as more of a social engineering challenge than anything to do with technology etc. We had to fundamentally change how people communicate and collaborate in a work setting.

Ideally, you'd like to use the "carrot" approach: this is better, this will make you more productive, this is good for the company, this is good for your career, and so on.

But it looks like we have a "stick" at our disposal now: can't keep doing business as usual, you'll have to try some new things to achieve your objectives, time to get with the program, etc.

The nice thing about a carrot-and-stick approach is that you can beat people over the head with both ...

The "Social" In Social Computingtag:typepad.com,2003:post-571292092008-10-17T09:33:22-04:002008-10-17T09:33:22-04:00Something very interesting and unusual happened on the internal platform last week. I wasn't paying close attention (busy with other things) so I almost missed it. I can't really describe the business value in quantitative terms, but I know it...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Something very interesting and unusual happened on the internal platform last week.</p>
<p>I wasn't paying close attention (busy with other things) so I almost missed it.</p>
<p>I can't really describe the business value in quantitative terms, but I know it was very important and very cool.&nbsp; I just can't measure it, though.</p><p><strong>What Happened</strong></p>
<p>One of our more passionate social media advocates (Candi) suggested the idea of a &quot;Day In The Life Of EMC&quot;.</p>
<p>The idea was that everyone -- around the globe -- take pictures of their work day and work environment on October 9/10 -- and share them online, using our internal platform.&nbsp; She used the platform and email and whatever to spread the word, get people excited, etc.</p>
<p>The idea caught on like wildfire.&nbsp; It was viral in the extreme sense of the word.</p>
<p>I spent over an hour yesterday, just looking at the posts, the pictures, the commentary.&nbsp; Hundreds and hundreds of posts.&nbsp; Many of them giving me a glimpse of places and people I barely knew existed.</p>
<p>And, as I was going through it, it started to dawn on me that I was looking at something very special, almost magical, and I've been struggling to describe it in more precise terms since then.</p>
<p><strong>The Value Of Feeling Connected</strong></p>
<p>There were some pretty powerful social dynamics at work here.</p>
<p><em>Here I am.&nbsp; Here is my space and environs.&nbsp; Here are the great people I work with.&nbsp; I am part of a larger company with a larger purpose, but here's where I fit in and contribute.&nbsp; I am relevant -- as are you.</em></p>
<p>We had over 28,000 people around the globe either contribute or view the results within a 5 day period.</p>
<p><em>Now, for all you ROI-heads, how do you put a price tag on this one?</em>&nbsp; </p>
<p>I can't do that.&nbsp; But I know it was pretty important nonetheless.&nbsp; And, since we did it for near-zero incremental cost, any ROI we get is pretty damn leveraged, wouldn't you agree?</p>
<p><strong>The Soft Side Of Social Computing</strong></p>
<p>Early on, like many of you, we struggled to come up with hard ROI numbers on our investment.&nbsp; During this process, we got there -- but we felt like we were synthesizing some numbers just so we could get on to what was really important -- connecting people, starting that Big Conversation we all wanted.</p>
<p>I consider this a failing of the ROI tools we use in business today -- they have sadly fallen out of step with the emerging nature of work and value-creation in our economy.&nbsp; How do you value a great idea?&nbsp; Or an insightful connection?</p>
<p>Maybe we'll have to revisit that dusty old MBA curriculum soon ... :-)</p></div>
New Learnings Begintag:typepad.com,2003:post-571067432008-10-16T17:45:07-04:002008-10-16T17:45:07-04:00First, let me apologize for not contributing to this blog for quite some time. One reason is that -- well -- it all was going pretty well. Another reason is that I got very engaged in other unrelated pursuits. But...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>First, let me apologize for not contributing to this blog for quite some time.</p>
<p>One reason is that -- well -- it all was going pretty well.&nbsp; Another reason is that I got very engaged in other unrelated pursuits.</p>
<p>But -- we're back -- and we now are encountering new kinds of problems as we move outside the firewall.</p><p><strong>Just To Bring You Up To Date</strong></p>
<p>This blog is all about establishing social media proficiency at a large technology company (EMC).</p>
<p>Our overall game plan was to establish internal proficiency, and then go marching outside the firewall with strength, skills and passion.</p>
<p>At least for us, this sort of game plan is working well.</p>
<p>About 90 days ago, we set up a dedicated organization (actually expanding the charter of an existing organization) to funnel through all the diverse external community requests we'd be getting.</p>
<p>Our interests in doing so are pretty obvious:</p>
<ul><li>We wanted shared infrastructure for all the usual cost and control reasons</li>
<li>We wanted a consistent, user-centric experience across a multitude of different community engagements</li>
<li>We wanted to help and coach people on exactly how you go about building an external community, because that's not exactly a skill that's easy to find.</li></ul>
<p>The results were pretty well expected:</p>
<ul><li>dozens and dozens of initiatives came our way, in all shapes, sizes and varieties, forcing a bit of prioritization by perceived business value.&nbsp; This can be hard when you tell some passionate community organizer that -- well -- you're on the standby list, so to speak.</li>
<li>a complete overwhelming of the resources we had assigned to do the work.&nbsp; Everyone involved is very good and very effective on the central team, but we're talking about a serious mismatch here -- even when we prioritize by business value.</li></ul>
<p>And we've encountered our first painful conceptual problem that's holding us back.</p>
<p><strong>Thinking About Communities</strong></p>
<p>We've had about a dozen conversations along the same lines.</p>
<p>Here's what WE want.&nbsp; Here's how WE'RE going to organize things.&nbsp; Here's how WE'RE going to manage our community.</p>
<p>I think you get the pattern -- people are strongly biasing in terms of thinking about THEIR needs, rather than the COMMUNITY'S needs.</p>
<p>And we're losing all sorts of time trying to re-orient people properly.</p>
<p><strong>It's All About Shared Interests, Isn't It?</strong></p>
<p>So, we're developing a little informal methodology as we go along.&nbsp; Start by talking about why you -- the internal person -- wants to do this community.&nbsp; Great.&nbsp; All the usual things show up -- no surprise.</p>
<p>And then we go a bit further.</p>
<p>We ask: what are the hot, burning topics that you want to talk about?&nbsp; And who's going to lead the conversation?&nbsp; This steers the discussion nicely away from people who think in terms of a Web 1.0 content repository as &quot;community&quot;.</p>
<p>So they give us a list of their hot topics that they think they're really interested in.&nbsp; And, in many cases, people who are able to lead the conversation, mostly because they've been doing so on the internal platform.</p>
<p><em>And then we go for the big one.</em></p>
<p>What do you think <strong>other</strong> people are interested in?&nbsp; You know, the ones that aren't employees of the company?&nbsp; </p>
<p>What are *their* hot burning topics? </p>
<p>Some of these are rather sensitive topics that the internal groups don't want to address.&nbsp; Better reconcile yourself with this sooner than later folks, or don't even bother starting.</p>
<p>Sometimes the answer is &quot;hey, we get asked such and such, but we really don't have a good answer, so we probably don't want to focus on this&quot;.&nbsp; </p>
<p>You can see the picture, can't you?&nbsp; People are having trouble coming to grips with the harsh reality is that community success is based on doing what the community wants, and much less so than what the organizer wants to talk about.&nbsp; </p>
<p>But, in some cases, they're open to this brave new world with less control (but far more passionate engagement).&nbsp; But they're not quite sure how to start.</p>
<p>So we take a different tack -- any group of people outside the company who'd be willing to work with you on building this community?&nbsp; If the answer is &quot;yes&quot;, a clear solution presents itself -- build a community to discussion building the community -- a meta-community?</p>
<p><strong>This Is A Big Problem</strong></p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Because we're faced with two unattractive choices.</p>
<p>Choice #1 is we let these poorly conceived communities get out into the wild, and let many of them fail.&nbsp; We're just uncomfortable with that on several levels.&nbsp; Sure, a few failures are OK, but designing for failure is just unappealing.</p>
<p>Choice #2 is spend an inordinate amount of time working with people to fully understand the dynamics of the proposition, and fundamentally change their thinking.</p>
<p>We're pursuing the second course, naturally.&nbsp; But it's going to be a longer slog than I originally hoped.</p>
<p>I can only hold out hope that -- before long -- &quot;community thinking&quot; becomes part of tribal knowledge at my company, and we'll have to do a whole lot less of this sort of stuff.</p>
</div>
Does It Make Sense To Have A Corporate Presence On (insert name of popular social platform here)?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-544568702008-08-20T10:02:48-04:002008-08-20T10:02:48-04:00I promised you I'd share with you the interesting aspects of our journey. And I think I've got another one. The good news: we've got lots and lots of people across the company who are intrigued and passionate about this...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>I promised you I'd share with you the interesting aspects of our journey.</p>
<p>And I think I've got another one.</p>
<p>The good news: we've got lots and lots of people across the company who are intrigued and passionate about this whole web 2.0 thing -- and are starting to realize that conversations will be king.</p>
<p>The challenging part -- we're seeing the same sort of question being asked over and over again.</p><p><strong>I Like Repeatable Patterns</strong></p>
<p>You might think that seeing the same sort of thing over and over again is a bad thing.&nbsp; It's not -- it means that there's a repeatable pattern there that can be abstracted and genericized, which lets us move on to the next topic or concern.</p>
<p>So, let me share with you a lightly-edited post I did on our internal platform ...</p>
<p>---------------------------------</p>
<p><strong>Does Having A Corporate Presence On (<em>insert name of latest social platform here</em>) Make Sense?</strong></p>
<p>Make no mistake, there's lots of new and interesting social community platforms out there today, with more being added every day. I used to spend a fair amount of time trying to learn a bit about each new tool and platform that came around. I gave up on that over a year ago -- there's just too many to keep up with.</p>
<p>The good news? Smart, passional people across all of our comapny are keeping an eye on all of this, and asking good questions about our use of these external social platforms. Whether it's Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or whatever -- they're all good questions.</p>
<p>Well, if the questions are roughly similar, I'm starting to believe that the answers are roughly similar as well. And, as part of the overall discussion, I thought I'd offer my perspectives, with the hopes that others will jump in.</p>
<p><strong>What Are Your Goals?</strong></p>
<p>You know, if someone asked me &quot;<em>does it make sense to go to Cleveland?&quot;,</em> I'd have to ask the obvious question -- why do you think you need to go to Cleveland? </p>
<p>There's an implied context here of goals and objectives that serve as a framework for any decision we might make about anything. I'd encourage people to think in these broader terms of what we might want to get done, rather than the pros or cons of any particular social platform.</p>
<p><em>Is our goal recruitment of certain types of employees?</em> </p>
<p>The people doing that type of recruiting for the company ought to have a strategy about how they best want to do it, including platforms like LinkedIn or SecondLife or wherever they think good potential employees might be loitering about. </p>
<p>And, given the plethora of places for people to go hang out online these days, I would imagine that they'd need a pretty segmented strategy to get after it.&nbsp; Bottom line: they own this goal for the company, so I'd leave it to them to figure out what's best here.</p>
<p><em>Is our goal to dialog and communicate with customers, prospects or partners?</em> </p>
<p>Then I think the question is mis-framed: it's not really about the platform or place, it's about the corporate person doing the communicating, and the topics they want to engage on. </p>
<p>All of these social platforms are, well, <em>social</em> -- that implies that we can keep up our end of the conversation. And as many of us who do this for the company have found out, you end up talking to people in a variety of places: blogs, forums, emails, etc.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Place matters less than person, I believe.</p>
<p><em>Is our goal to have a place where people can just hang out and chat?</em> </p>
<p>Nothing wrong with that -- but does it serve a business purpose? I was following company-related conversations for a while on Twitter, until I realized it was mostly idle chatter -- a sort of global brain hum. I didn't see much business value in that for us.&nbsp; Maybe for other people, though.</p>
<p><em>Is it all about building our brand?</em> </p>
<p>For me, this is the squishiest one -- because everything we all do affects our brand in one way or another. Fortunately, we have people at our company who look after various aspects of our brand -- in the media, in the employment world, and so on. And my temptation would be to leave it up to them to figure out what's best for brand management.</p>
<p>And let's not forget about brand alignment. There are lots and lots of places to hang out in the internet, not all of which might align with our corporate brand. Or, maybe the people who hang out there might resent some big vendor showing up and announcing their presence. </p>
<p>Social cues are important online as well as the physical world.</p>
<p>I don't know if those are your goals -- but, before we can answer the question as to whether it makes sense for our company to have a presence on (<em>insert the name of your favoriate social platform here</em>), we have to get into the habit of asking about goals.</p>
<p>Sharing industry statistics and quoting industry notables does make for good reading, but I don't see that as a substitute for a clear discussion of what you're trying to achieve, and why. </p>
<p>Or, in some cases, who else might own that particular goal at the company.</p>
<p><strong>Are We Ready To Invest?</strong></p>
<p>Nothing is free.</p>
<p>I think that includes having a sustained presence on (<em>insert the name of your favorite social platform here</em>). Web 2.0 is all about conversation, and less so about nice looking web pages. </p>
<p>Conversation requries sustained effort -- as anyone who's been to a long-ish dinner party can attest to. You can't simply start a conversation and check out -- that's considered anti-social in both the physical and virtual worlds. </p>
<p>For me, that means that we need to pick our targets carefully, understand who we want to reach and why we want to reach them, and then have a sustained plan to engage -- and stay engaged!! </p>
<p>Nothing is as pitiful as coming across the dead bones of someone's great idea out there on the web. And that includes corporate branded initiatives.</p>
<p><strong>OK, I Feel Better Now</strong></p>
<p>Please don't misunderstand my intentions -- I think this is all very cool stuff -- that's why I'm engaged in it. And I'm thrilled that so many bright and passionate people are enthused about this stuff as I am -- the more the better!</p>
<p>I think that part of our overall corporate learning process includes the generation of frameworks of how to think about generic classes of problems, rather than individual problems themselves. I think this topic is an emerging example of this evolution.</p>
<p>As an example, over the last year or so, I think we've learned how to think about blogs very effectively -- we've got a nice body of knowledge that gives us generic guideposts about what we should do, and -- more importantly -- why. </p>
<p>We're also in the process of figuring out this whole internal community thing as well. All good.&nbsp; We've got a part of our company now focused on the whole external community thing. My guess is that -- before too long -- we'll have a nice capability there as well.</p>
<p>And, as we sort through the ever-growing myriad of things 2.0-ish like whether or not our company should have a presence on (<em>insert the name of your favoriate social platform here</em>), we'll probably end up with a generic framework as well.</p>
<p>At least -- I hope so!</p>
<p>--------------------</p>
<p>So, that's what I shared with people -- what do you think?</p></div>
Reactions to Clearspace 2.5tag:typepad.com,2003:post-543958262008-08-19T09:21:44-04:002008-08-19T09:21:44-04:00Well, the big news today is that Jive launched the latest version of Clearspace 2.5 And -- if anything -- I feel vindicated that we picked the right product and the right company when we got started on this a...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Well, the big news today is that Jive launched the latest version of Clearspace 2.5</p>
<p>And -- if anything -- I feel vindicated that we picked the right product and the right company when we got started on this a year or so ago.</p>
<p>Now, I haven't done any hands-on yet, but here's what I can see so far:</p><p><strong>Are They Psychic?</strong></p>
<p>As I looked through all the new functionality, it was almost like they were going down a punchlist of things I've wanted for a while.&nbsp; Now, very few features are actually a &quot;surprise&quot;.&nbsp; The surprise factor comes from seeing the closed loop process: Jive asks us for feedback, we tell them what's important to us and why, and -- lo and behold -- something similar shows up in announced product before too long.</p>
<p>Seeing that closed-loop process at work is nothing short of amazing, so congratulations, folks ...</p>
<p><strong>Key Features</strong></p>
<p>All sorts of goodness here.</p>
<p>The email integration features is sorely needed in our environment.&nbsp; We needed the ability for people to work in email, and not only get copies of discussions, but to post content as well.&nbsp; I only got a brief glimpse at the feature setup, but it looks very promising.</p>
<p>The ability to use Clearspace as a &quot;discuss this&quot; enhancement for our vast collection of legacy web pages (both inside and outside) looks extremely useful.&nbsp; We get a two-fer: not only do we get a valuable upgrade for our legacy pages, but we get new feeds into the community.</p>
<p>Not being a touchy-feely guy, I probably didn't appreciate the &quot;connections&quot; feature as much as some people would, but I do know that many of our users will want this cool abilty to connect and categorize their many relationships in our growing social universe.</p>
<p>The text editor appears to have been fixed.&nbsp; I will reserve judgment on this one until I'm running production code, but -- at a minimum -- Jive heard all of our pitiful wails regarding this painful bit of code, and has invested in something better.</p>
<p>Jive is also claiming a performance improvement of roughly 2x.&nbsp; Not that we're having performance problems per se, it's just that I notice that things get incrementally more sluggish with each passing month.&nbsp; I see this as more of a function of increased usage, rather than a specific issue with the Jive product.</p>
<p>I would believe that performance is one of those issues that Jive will have to keep after in every release.&nbsp; The more your product gets used, the more important performance becomes.&nbsp; Trust me on this.</p>
<p><strong>Bottom Line</strong></p>
<p>I really like what I see -- not only in the product, but in the company.&nbsp; </p>
<p>I've been very pleased with our Clearspace / Jive experience up to now -- and now I have every reason to expect it'll even get better in the future.</p>
<p>Great job, guys!</p></div>
Moving Outside The Firewalltag:typepad.com,2003:post-538451762008-08-06T14:21:03-04:002008-08-06T14:21:03-04:00In my last post, I offered up the analogy that our journey was like an airplane trip, and -- at least for our internal effort -- we were at cruising altitude. I was a bit premature. Now we're about to...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>In my last post, I offered up the analogy that our journey was like an airplane trip, and -- at least for our internal effort -- we were at cruising altitude.</p>
<p>I was a bit premature.&nbsp; Now we're about to land, and connect onward to another leg of our journey -- going outside of the firewall.&nbsp; There'll be a bit of chaos as we get off one flight, and on to the next ...</p>
<p><em>And it's going to be nice to get back to cruising altitude soon ...</em></p><p><strong>One Of Our BIg Ideas</strong></p>
<p>As we approach this whole topic of social media proficiency at EMC, one of our guiding principles was the whole notion of &quot;inside out&quot;, e.g. develop internal proficiency first, then venture outside armed with (a) knowledge of how this stuff works, and (b) many more willing participants.</p>
<p>We didn't want to have an external presence that was unconnected to the inner workings of our company.&nbsp; Ideally, our notion of a &quot;big conversation&quot; would extend outside of our firewall to reach many, many others.</p>
<p>Well, we have arguably achieved some degree of internal proficiency.&nbsp; Now it's time to go outside.</p>
<p><em>But we had to get organized first ...</em></p>
<p><strong>A Centralized Function</strong></p>
<p>We could easily have hundreds of internal functions who each wanted &quot;their&quot; community outside the firewall.&nbsp; Indeed, a few &quot;intrapeneurs&quot; have <a href="http://www.emcevents.info/thecircle/index.html">gotten ahead of us</a>, showing the potential of this approach.</p>
<p>But there are corporate interests at stake here, right?</p>
<p>I mean, we'd like to have a relatively consistent (and high quality) experience across all of our communities.&nbsp; And there has to be an &quot;outside in&quot; view of all of this, organized by the needs of participants, rather than the needs of the individual community sponsors.</p>
<p>I've also noticed that there's a natural &quot;expanding universe&quot; tendency with some of these early efforts -- rather than narrowly focusing in on their initial constituency, they tend to be very broad in their intent and scope -- meaning that community formation rates are very poor.</p>
<p>And, let's face it -- building thriving external communities is very hard work.&nbsp; It takes a lot of effort, and it doesn't come naturally to everyone.</p>
<p>So, early on, we decided we would need a centralized function that acted as a sort of enabler and consistency creator across all of the communities we could envision.</p>
<p><em>But where to build it?</em></p>
<p><strong>Add-On, or Standalone?</strong></p>
<p>Initially, we had hoped that we could build such an external community function alongside our traditional e-marketing activities.&nbsp; We got started with the same group who does our web site as well as several other internal platforms, and tried to make a go of it by simply adding on to what we already had.</p>
<p>Frankly speaking, the results were suboptimal.&nbsp; I don't think it was the specifics of the people or the organization involved; I think the difficulty arose in achieving that singularity of focus that's needed to get really good at something that's really hard.</p>
<p>Our internal e-marketing team had a lot going on -- this was just another important project in the big scheme of important projects.&nbsp; It was hard to get the focus we needed.&nbsp; So we retrenched, and came up with another approach.</p>
<p><strong>A Diamond In The Rough</strong></p>
<p>Turns out we went another way -- we found an internal group that was already proficient in building and running an external community, and we decided to extend their charter substantially.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://community.emc.com/community/edn">EMC Developer Network</a> has been a thriving community of developers who want to develop their software using EMC's tools, not unlike other software development ecosystems.&nbsp; Not only was their community up-and-thriving, but they'd learned what makes communities tick, how they develop and grow, had a nice platform, and so on.</p>
<p>We convinced this team that they could not only look after their important community, but they could create a parallel function to help coordinate these external community activities across the company.&nbsp; That's a big leap, and not to be undertaken lightly.&nbsp; You don't want to lose focus on the community that you've already built in your quest to become the corporate focal point for all external community work.</p>
<p>I think we got lucky that we had these skills in place, and that they were very proficient.&nbsp; The alternative idea of &quot;building from scratch&quot; was not appealing in the least.</p>
<p><strong>A Schema For Meta-Community</strong></p>
<p>Our lead for this team quickly jumped on a key point: unless we had an organizing paradigm that made sense to outside participants, things could get very chaotic very quickly.</p>
<p>The trick was to avoid an overly restrictive taxonomy or heirarchy (lots of discussion why that's a bad thing), yet help people navigate to the areas that aligned around their interests.&nbsp; And it had to be what our audience was interested in, and not necessarily what we were interested in.</p>
<p>The resulting proposal schema (&quot;EMC Community Network&quot;) has the right &quot;feel&quot; between organized and loose, and -- based on what I can see -- will bring a relatively consistent experience to the table, while still allowing the dynamic, free-flowing nature essential to community development.</p>
<p>I also liked that the organizing principle was what our audiences were interested in, and not necessarily how EMC viewed the world.&nbsp; Hard to get that external perspective, but it's oh-so-essential in this stuff.</p>
<p><strong>But There Are Other Interests On The Table</strong></p>
<p>This free-standing external community development organization can't live in a vacuum.&nbsp; For example, it's pretty clear that whatever they do are part of the overall web experience that the company delivers, hence we're going to need some strong involvement from our e-marketing team.</p>
<p>Likewise, there will be IT-specific concerns around security, risk and technology integration.&nbsp; So they're part of the team as well.</p>
<p>We came up with a &quot;working committee&quot; structure that will allow this externally-focused community development group to focus and deliver, but hopefully ensure that other stakeholder needs are accounted for and discussed.</p>
<p>So far, so good.</p>
<p><strong>This Structure Vs. Other Alternatives</strong></p>
<p>I'd go so far to say that this sort of structure might be workable for other companies as well.&nbsp; The free-standing team gets focus and passion, yet has to tie in with other functions who have a vested stake.&nbsp; I'm pretty sure the &quot;driven by IT&quot; approach won't work in many circumstances.&nbsp; Nor will the &quot;driven by marketing&quot; approach work in too many situations.</p>
<p>This appears to be a free-standing organizational competency, and doesn't really align that well with marketing (although they're heavy users of the stuff), nor IT (although we need their help in delivering the infrastructure and integration).</p>
<p>Can you get there with other organizational structures?&nbsp; I'm sure you can -- but probably not as quickly.&nbsp; Although I'm sure there are a few people who aren't happy we're doing it this way, I have to say that I'm overjoyed with the structure.</p>
<p><strong>And Then Things Started Moving Very Fast</strong></p>
<p>In the space of just a few weeks, a bunch happened very quickly.</p>
<p>First, the team established an outreach community on our internal platform (EMC|ONE), targeted at all prospective external community builders.&nbsp; I have this saying about using social media techniques to solve social media problems, and this is yet another example.</p>
<p>Rather than have a bunch of meetings, they defined a space where all comers with an interest in external communities could join, learn, discuss -- as well as become a bit more articulate about what they wanted to do, and why.</p>
<p>Second, we were able to come up with a fairly quick ranking of which external communities were priorities, and which ones could wait until later.&nbsp; This sort of list helps to focus our efforts.</p>
<p>Third, the small dev team was able to quickly prototype what the external meta-community (EMC Community Network) would look like -- look, feel, navigation, etc.&nbsp; I've discovered that when communicating this stuff, a picture (or mock up) is worth ten thousand words -- and takes a lot less time to communicate.</p>
<p><strong>Now We're Cooking</strong></p>
<p>I don't know when the first (new) external communities will appear.&nbsp; I'm not sure when we're going to announce or promote the meta-community.&nbsp; As a matter of fact, I only have a very hazy idea of schedules and milestones.</p>
<p>But I'm not too concerned about that at this juncture.</p>
<p>Why?&nbsp; </p>
<ul><li>We've got a focused team with demonstrated proficiency at this stuff.&nbsp; </li>
<li>We've aligned their role with other vested stakeholders, and we have the lightweight policy governance we need to get things done and resolve conflicts.&nbsp; </li>
<li>We've established an internal focal point for everyone who's interested.&nbsp; </li>
<li>We've now got the ability to get customized and enhanced external community scaffolding up and running quickly. </li>
<li>We've got thousands of internal participants who are comfortable with this stuff, and &quot;get it&quot; </li>
<li>And we have community coaches who have now down it before.</li></ul>
<p>Simply put, we've got all the ingredients we need for external proficiency.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>Now it's time to get cooking!</em> &nbsp; </p></div>
Life At 35,000 Feettag:typepad.com,2003:post-534337162008-07-29T10:04:08-04:002008-07-29T10:04:08-04:00This whole subject of social media proficiency and enterprise 2.0 begs for analogies, so let me try a new one on you: Getting good at this stuff is like an airplane trip. At the outset of an airplane journey, it's...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This whole subject of social media proficiency and enterprise 2.0 begs for analogies, so let me try a new one on you:</p>
<p><em>Getting good at this stuff is like an airplane trip.</em></p>
<p>At the outset of an airplane journey, it's all hassle.&nbsp; Finding the right flight, getting to the airport, dealing with security, disposing of all your liquids, taking off your shoes -- awful stuff.&nbsp; At the gate, it's lousy food, no seats, delays and weather, airplanes full of cranky people -- none of it fun.</p>
<p>Eventually, it's time for takeoff.&nbsp; Lots of rumbling, vibrations and strange noises.&nbsp; If you've never flown before, you look around and wonder &quot;is all of this normal?&quot;.</p>
<p>Finally, you break through the clouds.&nbsp; The captain turns off the seat belt sign.&nbsp; Everyone relaxes and settles in.&nbsp; Drinks are served.&nbsp; You're on your way.</p>
<p>Well, we're pretty much at that stage in our journey.&nbsp; We're at cruising altitude.</p><p><strong>A Brief Update</strong></p>
<p>What prompted this post was simple: I'm meeting many more people who are at the earlier stages in the journey.&nbsp; They're wrestling with multiple issues that we're well past, and we don't give any thought to any more.&nbsp; For us, things are pretty serene, and we're making good progress towards our goals.</p>
<p>I came back from an extended trip, and looked at the internal platform.&nbsp; I saw a continuous stream of beefy, engaged business-oriented conversations on dozens of topics.&nbsp; I saw that we had a half-dozen new communities springing into formation, each with a high degree of business value, and conducting themselves with confidence and enthusiasm.</p>
<p>We've entirely lost the golly-gee-whiz-this-is-all-so-new feeling that permeated the activites of the first few months.&nbsp; Everyone seems to know what to expect, how to engage, and how to leverage the new social computer.</p>
<p>Nobody asks for justification any more.&nbsp; Nobody wonders how this platform compares and contrasts with other alternatives.&nbsp; Nobody is waiting for the Official Word that this is a sanctioned and supported activity.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Sure, there's more to do.&nbsp; There's a list of features we'd like to implement -- some of them we may get from our vendor, others we'll probably have to do ourselves.</p>
<p>We have certain audiences that are still unaware of what this is all about, and how to use it.&nbsp; But they're finding out slowly, in their own way.&nbsp; I have budget people coming to me who want to talk seriously about long-term funding and staffing. </p>
<p><strong>Example 1 -- Content Generation</strong></p>
<p>EMC creates a lot of content.&nbsp; Sometimes, I think we don't make products, we just make stuff that talks about our products.</p>
<p>Historically, this stuff went to the Official Corporate Portal.&nbsp; There was a long and somewhat cumbersome process to get stuff reviewed, approved and posted on the portal.&nbsp; There were insufficient mechanisms for sorting and finding stuff -- and presenting stuff in an attractive fashion.&nbsp; And, like most Corporate Portals, it slowly turned into a big pile of stuff that many people didn't think was entirely useful, and could be better.</p>
<p>Now, it seems that most content comes through our internal social media platform on its way to the corporate portal.&nbsp; Preliminary documents are posted, discussed, debated and revised.&nbsp; The comments are sometimes more interesting than the document itself.&nbsp; </p>
<p>It's much easier to find stuff.&nbsp; Our &quot;community model&quot; helps a lot -- you go to a community that seems to be talking about what you're interested in, and you look around.&nbsp; Search works too, as do the tag clouds and groups. </p>
<p>But, best of all, when you find something you're interested in, you see the people who are involved in the process.&nbsp; And -- after all -- weren't you really after the people, rather than the content?</p>
<p><strong>Example 2 -- Reach Out And Touch Someone</strong></p>
<p>If you're in a company of 40,000 people, and happen to be at one of the more remote outposts, sometimes you don't even know where to start.&nbsp; You don't know exactly what the problem is, or how to ask the question, or where to start looking.</p>
<p>We're starting to see more &quot;IHAC&quot; questions.&nbsp; &quot;IHAC&quot; stands for &quot;I have a customer ...&quot; followed by a statement of the situation, the ideas that the local team are working with, and an open-ended what-do-you-suggest question.</p>
<p>People chime in with what they know, and what they would do.&nbsp; Sometimes, a debate erupts between contributors as to exactly what the best approach might be.&nbsp; </p>
<p>The posting team not only gets access to a wealth of perspectives, opinions and experiences -- but now they've got a virtual team to work with.&nbsp; And, of course, the entire discussion lays there waiting for the next person who comes along.</p>
<p>Very powerful stuff.</p>
<p><strong>Example 3 -- Mac Support</strong></p>
<p>I don't know about you, but I want to use a Mac at work.&nbsp; So do lots of people.&nbsp; And, like many companies, EMC doesn't officially support Apple products in the workplace.&nbsp; The reason?&nbsp; It's too expensive.&nbsp; Fair enough.</p>
<p>Spontaneously, a &quot;Mac At EMC&quot; group sprang into existence.&nbsp; Wikis were created about how to configure things, what to buy, how to work around various problems.&nbsp; I've been using it a while, and it meets my needs.&nbsp; Sure, I can't lob a ticket into IT and have them fix things -- I have to take a more hands-on approach -- but it works, and it works well.</p>
<p>Just recently, the group figured out how to make the new iPhone 3G work on the corporate network.&nbsp; Now I want one of those, too.</p>
<p>Incremental cost to EMC: zero.&nbsp; That is, until we have to upgrade our entire remote access network to support a bazillion iPhones ;-)</p>
<p><strong>Example 4 -- The Old Guard Gets On Board</strong></p>
<p>Like any company that's grown through acquisition, there's pockets of Old Guard and New Guys at EMC.&nbsp; Subtle but powerful lines divide people into tribes.&nbsp; Inevitable in any large company, right?</p>
<p>The Old Guard has always done things in certain ways, and done them with people they know and trust.&nbsp; Comfortable for them, but not ideal from a strategic perspective.</p>
<p>As of late, several communities aligned with Old Guard interests have sprung into existence.&nbsp; They've gotten over their discomfort, and fully embraced open communities of like-minded people.&nbsp; There's no way I could have made them do this -- they had to do this under their terms and conditions.</p>
<p>I don't know how to put a number on this implicit -- yet very significant -- change in mindset.&nbsp; I can't measure it, but I know it's important, and very valuable.</p>
<p><strong>Back To My Analogy</strong></p>
<p>Analogies only work up to a point.&nbsp; And you can't say that anyone really likes being on an airplane -- at least, for those of us who travel regularly.</p>
<p>But we like where we are.&nbsp; Even if we did nothing more to improve the platform, our methodologies, get more people engaged, show better ROI, etc. -- we could stop just where we are, and take a justified victory lap.</p>
<p><em>But we're not going to do that, because we have a destination in mind ...</em></p>
<p><strong>And Now We're Ready To Go Outside</strong></p>
<p>I don't know if you remember this, but my grand plan was to work on internal proficiency for a while, and then go outside the firewall in a thoughtful way, armed with thousands of people at EMC who know what this stuff is all about.</p>
<p>Guess what?&nbsp; <em>We're ready.</em></p>
<p>More on that later.</p></div>
Before You Go Social, Consider Contenttag:typepad.com,2003:post-527244602008-07-15T10:46:13-04:002008-07-15T10:46:13-04:00In my travels and discussions on this topic, we often get into an exploration of the interplay between social software (interactions between people) and enterprise content management (the stuff we all use). And I've come to the viewpoint that many...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>In my travels and discussions on this topic, we often get into an exploration of the interplay between social software (interactions between people) and enterprise content management (the stuff we all use).</p>
<p>And I've come to the viewpoint that many people are considering bypassing an important step in their evolution and proficiency.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Whether intentional or not, it deserves some exploration.</p><p><strong>Understanding Content</strong></p>
<p>Think for a moment about all the unstructured information in your environment.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>Documents.&nbsp; Emails.&nbsp; Web pages.&nbsp; Scanned images.&nbsp; Reports.&nbsp; Presentations.&nbsp; If it's not a transaction, it's content.</em></p>
<p>Now, think about how your people interact with that content.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>Finding things.&nbsp; Driving structured and unstructured workflows.&nbsp; Projects and initiatives.&nbsp; Keeping records for later use.&nbsp; Publishing.</em></p>
<p>Now -- think again.&nbsp; How much corporate value is entwined in this stuff and how people use it?</p>
<p><em>One view is that enterprise content is the distilled intellectual capital of the organization.</em></p>
<p>And -- in my day job as an EMC person -- I have long argued that most businesses will need to think in terms of a &quot;content backbone&quot; that spans multiple organizations and functions.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Ideally, content can be captured anywhere, and used anywhere.&nbsp; Metadata defines what the content means to different parties.&nbsp; Sources and uses of content plug into a common highway where the rules of the road are well understood.</p>
<p>Typically, we see puddles of content everywhere.&nbsp; Dozens and dozens of isolated projects, each with their unique take on what their problem is, each with their own vertical stack.&nbsp; And locked in each and every one are useful documents that can have value elsewhere in the organization.</p>
<p><em>You wouldn't manage money this way.&nbsp; Why would you manage information this way?</em></p>
<p><strong>People-Centric vs. Content-Centric</strong></p>
<p>One of the simmering debates is that a &quot;people-centric&quot; model (as found in social software) is inherently better or superior to a &quot;content-centric&quot; model (as found in enterprise content management).</p>
<p>Based on my experience, I strongly disagree.&nbsp; </p>
<p>The more accurate view is that one builds on the other.&nbsp; More specifically, the content-centric model provides valuable support for the people-centric model, and extend the latter's usefulness and business impact.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Or, to be more alarmist, if you haven't solved the content problem, you may find that your social software has become the de-facto enterprise content management system for the company.&nbsp; And that's not good.</p>
<p>My suggestion?&nbsp; People thinking strategically in this arena should give this premise some thought, I'd argue.</p>
<p><strong>I Live In A Content-Managed World</strong></p>
<p>Full disclosure: EMC develops and sells the Documentum family of enterprise content management solutions -- arguably the most advanced stuff out there.&nbsp; And more disclosure: EMC is a relatively proficient user of this ECM (enterprise content management) approach.</p>
<p>And, as I started blogging about our work in the social productivity space, I had a presumed context where (a) everyone understood the importance of enterprise content management, and (b) had a decent foundation of ECM capabilities and processes that were widely deployed.</p>
<p><em>I'm learning that this is not always the case ;-)</em></p>
<p><strong>Benefits Of Living In A Content Managed World</strong></p>
<p>Simply put, we know where to find important, authoritative content -- and we know where to put important, authoritative content.&nbsp; And we don't depend on our social software for either function.</p>
<p>There are times when us knowledge workers need to find something authoritative, and not the latest wiki edit.&nbsp; We need to find (and share) information that has a higher standard than an informal blog post, or discussion thread.</p>
<p>And there are times where we need robust tools that support well-defined processes for producing authoritative content: workflow, revisions, authorized roles, etc.&nbsp; Wikis are nice, but they're not ECM.</p>
<p>The world of content is much, much larger than what shows up in the typical social software environment.&nbsp; If you think about *all* corporate content, you'll expand your frame to include emails (internal and external), scanned images and faxes, publications of all sorts, web presence, formal letters, and so on.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Not only that, but there's a grown-up side to enterprise content management: what's the retention policy?&nbsp; Do we need a formal audit trail for revisions?&nbsp; Do we need a security audit trail on who's seen what?&nbsp; Is this confidential information?</p>
<p>Not too many of the social software vendors have even thought about the question, let alone have a suitable answer.&nbsp; That's fine -- they do what they do well -- and that's good.&nbsp; But that doesn't mean that those of us who are looking out for our corporations should realize these different needs, and plan accordingly.</p>
<p><strong>ECM As The Basis For Success With Social Software?</strong></p>
<p>I am now realizing that one of the reasons that we at EMC are relatively successful with our internal proficiency efforts is that we had a great starting point -- we had the content domain relatively under control.</p>
<p>We had pretty good ideas about what sorts of things belonged in each, and how they could work together.</p>
<p><em>I shudder to think what might have happened if we hadn't been so fortunate.</em>&nbsp; </p>
<p>I'm guessing that we would have been swamped with trying to meet unmet enterprise content management needs.&nbsp; We would have been buried with people wanting to store, share and manage content in a variety of ways -- and been sidetracked into an unpleasant cul-de-sac where we were trying to use social software to solve a content management problem.</p>
<p>And, in a large enterprise, these unmet needs could be considerable.&nbsp; It could have been really ugly, and resulted in a total failure.</p>
<p><strong>How My Discussions Have Changed</strong></p>
<p>Now, when I meet with people outside my company, and discuss social media proficiency, I'm starting to ask the question &quot;do you have enterprise content under control?&quot;.&nbsp; </p>
<p>And, as is often the case, the answer is &quot;no&quot;.</p>
<p>And I feel it's my duty to explain that skipping this important step in how you support your knowledge workers might be an important one.&nbsp; Although they're essentially different problems (and require different approaches), I now believe strongly that one lays the foundation for the other.</p>
<p>I want to make sure that they understand that our internal capabilities in enterprise content management greatly increased our odds of success.&nbsp; I want to make sure they understand that social productivity usually starts with sharing content of different types.&nbsp; </p>
<p>And I want to make sure they understand that if there's a great unmet need in their organziations, their social producivity software environment will be unceremoniously transformed into an informal enteprise content management system -- with very unpleasant results.</p>
<p>I've written before about how I see social software as a &quot;layer&quot; over a robust ECM foundation.&nbsp; But, put differently, I now have seen results where that layer isn't ideal, it's almost necessary.&nbsp; </p>
<p>I've met companies where the wiki tool is being used for legal documents, or content that has regulatory implications.&nbsp; <em>Scary stuff.</em>&nbsp; I've seen environments where real applications are trying to be built (e.g. workflows and important business processes) on tools that were never envisioned for this role.&nbsp; <em>More scary stuff.</em></p>
<p><strong>The Bottom Line</strong></p>
<p>The title of this blog is &quot;A Journey In Social Media&quot;.&nbsp; </p>
<p>I now realize that an important part of this journey was the implied starting point we had: a widespread capability around ECM that was an integral part of the landscape.</p>
<p>So, before you embark on your journey, it's worth a moment of reflection to understand whether you need to invest the time and cycles to build the same foundation we enjoyed.</p>
<p><em>Otherwise, you may find yourself in a very unpleasant situation.</em></p></div>
A Humbling Experiencetag:typepad.com,2003:post-524180262008-07-08T17:46:59-04:002008-07-08T17:46:59-04:00You know, you go through life thinking you've got some stuff figured out, and -- one day -- you get "schooled" in a very shocking (and beneficial) manner. I had just such an experience today. I have seen the future...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>You know, you go through life thinking you've got some stuff figured out, and -- one day -- you get &quot;schooled&quot; in a very shocking (and beneficial) manner.</p>
<p><em>I had just such an experience today.</em></p>
<p><em>I have seen the future of corporate social media in a way that I did not believe was possible.</em></p>
<p><em>I saw it working in ways that I thought were many years away.</em></p>
<p><em>And I'm going to have to re-evaluate a few things as a result.</em></p><p><strong>The Back Story</strong></p>
<p>A few months ago, I was presenting on multiple topics to GE's exec IT management, and we got into the whole topic of social productivity.&nbsp; The IT team was very interested in the topic.</p>
<p>After the session, Mark Mastrianni came up and shared what his team had been doing with their internal platform, SupportCentral.&nbsp; He invited me to come down and see what his team had been up to.</p>
<p>Calendars didn't line up for quite a while, but -- eventually -- I journeyed down to see them, not expecting all that much.&nbsp; I've seen maybe 30 or so internal efforts at this stuff -- all at the early stages.&nbsp; Usually, they've done one thing or another that I find interesting, and I share some of our experiences in return.</p>
<p>Not this time.</p>
<p><em>To say that I was blown away would be a bit of an understatement.</em></p>
<p><strong>A Bit About GE's SupportCentral</strong></p>
<p>Don't be put off by the name.&nbsp; This is an extremely advanced social productivity platform.</p>
<p>They got started working on this in 1999.&nbsp; <em>Think for a moment about how far you can get by working on a problem for eight years.</em></p>
<p>If I heard correctly, they've got maybe 40 people working on this, and -- with contractors -- over 100 folks supporting this initiative.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Their user adoption stats are incredible.&nbsp; As one small example, their internal platform gets more employee traffic than Google and Yahoo combined.</p>
<p>They drop new code every two weeks.&nbsp; They're deploying -- and using -- SM features that many of us could only dream about.&nbsp; I'm not sure -- even now -- that I fully understand all of it.&nbsp; It was apparent that they'd been incrementally innovating for many years, and incorporating all sorts of non-obvious feedback that only comes from <em>very proficient users.</em></p>
<p>Most importantly, it became apparent that they had successfully rewired GE's corporate DNA to function very effectively as a social computer.</p>
<p><strong>A Few Cool Features</strong></p>
<p>Yes, they do the blogging, wiki, discussion thing -- that's just for starters.</p>
<p>We debate on ideal SM models occasionally -- people-centric, community-centric, discussion-centric, document-centric, process-centric, etc.</p>
<p><em>They had support for every one of these models</em> -- seamlessly integrated.&nbsp; People can engage in any mode that makes sense to them.&nbsp; As one example, personal workspace content can be part of a community, discussion, process, etc.</p>
<p>Presence?&nbsp; <em>Just part of the environment, thanks.</em>&nbsp; They described themselves in a &quot;post-email world&quot;.&nbsp; <em>Nice.</em></p>
<p>Mashups?&nbsp; <em>Deployed for quite a while, thanks</em> -- all corporate repositories could easily be accessed.&nbsp; They'd lost count of the umpteen thousand mashups people had created.</p>
<p>What really blew me away was their integration of process tools.&nbsp; Business processes can be defined by anyone, refined by anyone, instantiated by anyone, measured by anyone.&nbsp; As a result, they could count 50,000 different business processes that were captured on the platform in some form or another.</p>
<p><em>That one made me think for a moment ...</em></p>
<p>They also had done a nice job of putting a somewhat formalized workflow layer over an essentially social environment.&nbsp; Some things are more important than others in a business setting.</p>
<p><strong>I Had To Catch My Breath</strong></p>
<p>When you get a glimpse of the future at work, it makes you take a moment to reflect on a few things.</p>
<p>First, the functionality they'd deployed was many years ahead of anything I've seen or heard about in the marketplace.&nbsp; More importantly, it was developed and deployed in response to documented business needs from proficient users who'd made this platform the core of their business life.</p>
<p>Second, they invested early and continuously.&nbsp; Sure, they had to fight for budget and recognition just like any other business investment, but their sustained commitment had obviously paid off in a tangible, sustainable business advantage.</p>
<p>Third, the rest of us are now at a substantial competitive disadvantage if we decide to compete with GE.&nbsp; Thankfully, they're a customer and not a competitor.&nbsp; Because they were so early, they probably had to invest more than those of us slowpokes who are relative noobs to all of this.</p>
<p>Fourth, it gave me tangible proof that social media / social productivity / social computing can work at mega-scale -- and I had a greater case that these techniques would re-make how business gets done in the future.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>Or, in the present, if you happen work for GE.</em></p>
<p>Fifth, if you're running one of those cool &quot;web 2.0 in the enterprise&quot; events, I'd make a special point of inviting Mark (or one of his team) to present.&nbsp; Everyone else talks big about the future -- but it appears the future has existed for quite a while at GE.</p>
<p>And if you're contemplating being a vendor or consultant in this space, I'd make a big effort to see what they've done, how they did it -- and, most importantly -- <em>why</em> they did it.&nbsp; </p>
<p><strong>What Got Tossed Out The Door?</strong></p>
<p><em>A whole bunch of &quot;conventional wisdom&quot; that I really didn't agree with anyway.</em></p>
<p>First, it clearly isn't a generational thing.&nbsp; If you're of this view, I now have documented proof that you're dead wrong.&nbsp; <em>Score one for my generation's ability to adopt new ways of working.</em></p>
<p>Second, traditional corporate cultures can't change.&nbsp; If there was any corporate culture more button-downed than GE's, I'd like to see it.&nbsp; And it now appears to be completely transformed around social computing.</p>
<p>Third, the assumption that this has to be a top-down mandate.&nbsp; Sure, Mark and his team are pretty senior, but they had to do this the hard way -- by convincing hundreds of thousands of people that this was a better way to work.</p>
<p>Fourth, that business justification is impossible.&nbsp; GE's culture is all about hard savings, and documented value.&nbsp; They routinely discredit soft justification.&nbsp; And they have been convinced in a big way -- and for quite a while.</p>
<p>Fifth, that social media is incompatible with business concerns.&nbsp; Their environment is pretty much business-oriented.&nbsp; There's not a lot of &quot;social&quot; going on the platform -- and it works very well, thank you.</p>
<p><em>Bravo to Mark and his team.</em></p>
<p><strong>Me?</strong></p>
<p>I've been humbled -- in a great and wonderful way.&nbsp; <em>And I've got a few things to think about.</em></p></div>
Finally, Product Communities?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-521283642008-07-01T15:47:29-04:002008-07-01T15:47:29-04:00I got into this whole social media proficiency thing about a year ago. My goal? Transform how my company (EMC) does business using social techniques. I am of the belief that communities are perhaps the most valuable social media construct....Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>I got into this whole social media proficiency thing about a year ago.</p>
<p>My goal?&nbsp; </p>
<p>Transform how my company (EMC) does business using social techniques.</p>
<p>I am of the belief that communities are perhaps the most valuable social media construct.&nbsp; And, if one is to think like a corporate strategist, the highest value comes from communities that are aligned with a company's core value propositions.</p>
<p>At its core, EMC is a product and technology company.&nbsp; </p>
<p>So, of course, one of my early goals were broad, powerful product communities that stretched outside the corporate firewalls.</p>
<p>And -- here we are -- almost a year later -- and we're finally starting to see a grass-roots groundswell in this direction.</p>
<p>So, in the spirit of sharing with others who are trying to do the same thing for their companies, I think it's worth a discussion of just what took so long ...</p><p><strong>Now, I'm Not Complaining</strong></p>
<p>As I've mentioned before, there's a ton of good that's come out of our efforts up to this point.&nbsp; I could write post after post on the nuggets of distinct and unique economic value we've seen so far.</p>
<p>But part of our corporate culture (and my personality) is to focus on what's not working, rather rest on our collective laurels.</p>
<p>And if EMC is a product company, we need product-oriented communities.</p>
<p><strong>So, What Took So Long?</strong></p>
<p>As I think about it, there's a number of factors that probably were behind the long gestation period.&nbsp; Some of these might be controllable, others not.</p>
<p>First, all of this was pretty new to everyone.&nbsp; Our internal platform (EMC|ONE) has been up since Sept 2007.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the idea of a single, open platform that encourages semi-public conversations on just about any topic that freely crosses organizational and management boundaries -- well, that kind of flew in the face of our traditional corporate culture.</p>
<p>However, there was much less resistance to the idea than I had any right to expect.&nbsp; I'm continually surprised by EMC's ability to change and adapt to new circumstances.</p>
<p>But -- even with this, it's still was a new beast that had to be approached with a bit of caution and trepidation before everyone felt comfortable giving it a big hug, so to speak.</p>
<p>Nine months is plenty of time for people -- at all levels of the organization -- to get comfortable not only with the platform, but to understand what it's good at, and what it's not.&nbsp; And to be absolutely sure that &quot;it's OK&quot;.</p>
<p>In retrospect, I think I underestimated how long it would take people to get really comfortable.</p>
<p>Could this be accelerated?&nbsp; Maybe -- if there was some sort of mandate to &quot;start using this thing&quot; -- we could have accelerated familiarity -- but also caused some resentment in the process.</p>
<p>There's also an underlying &quot;critical mass&quot; effect that probably helped.&nbsp; After a while, enough people were active and engaged on the platform that it wasn't something that required explanation, a learning curve, etc.</p>
<p>Could this be accelerated?&nbsp; I think we did everything humanly possible to do this in a natural, comfortable fashion.&nbsp; Had we tried any harder, we'd probably end up annoying far more people than we did ;-)</p>
<p>Second, the sponsorship for these product communities was distinctly grass roots.&nbsp; We didn't have many senior managers saying &quot;this is what we're going to do&quot;.</p>
<p>No, it was more quiet suggestions, over time, that eventually percolated up into management thinking.&nbsp; This takes time, I'd argue.</p>
<p>Indeed, I've heard stories of meetings where senior management initially resisted the idea of product communities, only to be confronted by several of their staff pushing back just as hard.</p>
<p>It takes time to build that sort of groundswell.</p>
<p>One of the smartest things we did was recruit Susan to do evangelist work, targeting potential high-value communities -- like product communities.</p>
<p>This doesn't happen in one or two meetings -- it's a regular, persistent cadence of meetings with different people, showing them what's possible, explaining the benefits, answering the concerns, and generally getting people comfortable with the idea -- multiple time, and at multiple levels.</p>
<p>Without Susan's efforts, I probably wouldn't be declaring initial progress.&nbsp; Indeed, I wouldn't try this without a dedicated role of &quot;community evangelist&quot; targeting high-value communities.&nbsp; Some things just don't happen by themselves.</p>
<p><strong>Waiting For Leaders To Emerge</strong></p>
<p>For this thing to work, people have to be willing and able to step up and play a new, important role among their peers.</p>
<p>I can't tell you how many times I had the &quot;somebody&quot; conversation.&nbsp; &quot;Somebody&quot; should step up and develop a community.&nbsp; &quot;Somebody&quot; should lead the charge.</p>
<p>I am now of the firm belief that these roles must be self-selected by people who are passionate, and have the respect of their peers.&nbsp; And if they don't step forward, you're dead.</p>
<p>Simply assigning someone a new role, or yet another job to do, doesn't engender the passion and the group spirit so essential to community formation.</p>
<p>And it takes time for these people to assess the situation, assess their own goals, assess the level of support and encouragement they'd get -- and cautiously step up.</p>
<p>A few people self-selected early, but didn't really have the support they needed from other community participants.&nbsp; We tried to work with these people and help them understand the social context they were working in, but we weren't always successful.&nbsp; And, after a while, it was clear that their efforts weren't paying off, and things moved on.</p>
<p>There was another delay from the opposite problem -- multiple people wanting to play a leadership role in community formation for what was essentially the same topic.</p>
<p>One of the things that Susan did well was to spot these situations, and do a bit of shuttle diplomacy to get all parties to agree that they had common interests -- and there was plenty of work (and credit) to go around.</p>
<p>In retrospect, I don't think can be explicitly accelerated.&nbsp; It takes time for the right conditions to form, for the proto-leaders to emerge, for them to gain the support they need, and to learn to collaborate with others who desire similar roles on similar topics.</p>
<p><strong>And A Kick In The Pants Doesn't Hurt, Either</strong></p>
<p>I have a lot of informal conversations across EMC with leaders at different levels.&nbsp; And I use that opportunity frequently to &quot;nudge&quot; people along in certain directions.</p>
<p>A few months ago, I added a new &quot;nudge&quot; to the mix: <em>what are you waiting for?</em></p>
<p>I mean, we've got a platform that's very successful -- everyone's using it.&nbsp; The business benefits we've seen to date are substantial and inarguable.&nbsp; Other groups at EMC are successfully using social productivity and communities to further their agendas.</p>
<p>If they push back a bit, I go for another round:</p>
<p>Look, you're always trying to find ways to do more with less, how can you ignore this?&nbsp; And, let's not forget, the company has invested in people and platform to help you do this -- I think it's expected that you'll use the resource to your advantage.</p>
<p>What are you waiting for, an MBO to be handed to you?</p>
<p>But, let's face it, you can't nudge people in this way unless you've created the backdrop for them to move ahead.</p>
<p>Something similar happened with globalization a few years back.&nbsp; We all knew that we had to have a global R+D organization.&nbsp; Our first round was simply telling different product groups they had to go do it.&nbsp; <br />Wasn't very successful.</p>
<p>Finally, we realized that the company had to invest in shared globalization infrastructure (shared R+D centers).&nbsp; Individual product groups found it much easier to globalize their R+D once the platform was in place, and other people had successfully started to use it.</p>
<p>And thing went much faster from that point.</p>
<p><strong>Will Other Social Media Strategists Be This Patient?</strong></p>
<p>I don't know.&nbsp; We've been at this for a year.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Sure, I wish we were farther along.&nbsp; But, by the same token, I think we've laid a very solid, grass-roots foundation.</p>
<p>Put differently, the initiative has to be driven top down.&nbsp; But if it isn't supported bottoms-up, you'll get nowhere.</p>
<p><em>And, to a certain extent, that takes time.</em></p></div>
Action and Reactiontag:typepad.com,2003:post-517909142008-06-24T10:54:29-04:002008-06-24T10:54:29-04:00Sorry about not keeping up here -- I'm saving the posts here for interesting questions and/or challenges we come across in our journey. And a few weeks ago, we stumbled into another one. And it's going to be interesting ......Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Sorry about not keeping up here -- I'm saving the posts here for interesting questions and/or challenges we come across in our journey.</p>
<p>And a few weeks ago, we stumbled into another one.</p>
<p>And it's going to be interesting ...</p><p><strong>We Want People To Have Conversations</strong></p>
<p>And they are.</p>
<p>Lots of conversations, really.&nbsp; Mostly about work stuff.&nbsp; But not always.</p>
<p>A while back, there was a notable surge in &quot;off topic&quot; discussions -- favorite movies, raising rabbits, anime, commute times, etc.</p>
<p>In a pure Web 2.0 idealized world, it's all good, right?</p>
<p>Well, we're not exactly in this progressive 2.0 world quite yet.&nbsp; And we have to be mindful of the transition.</p>
<p><strong>There Is A Valid Business Need For Off-Topic Discussions</strong></p>
<p>More and more of our teams are geographically and culturally dispersed.&nbsp; We want people to align and bond around common interests -- whatever they might be.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Just like we spend boatloads of money to fly people around for group meetings -- and subsequent &quot;team building&quot; events -- this sort of idle chatter has a role in &quot;enterprise 2.0&quot;, and we don't want to be shutting things down.</p>
<p>But, we also want broad adoption in our 1.0 employee base.&nbsp; And if certain 2.0 behaviors hamper that, well -- that's an issue, isn't it?</p>
<p><strong>Problem #1 -- Clutter</strong></p>
<p>With our current 1.x Clearspace implementation, we have a &quot;home page&quot; that dutifully records each and every thought someone shares (except blog comments for some reason).&nbsp; That off-topic clutter at a corporate level is downright annoying to many people.</p>
<p>Sure, the user can take action: set up filters, personalize, etc.&nbsp; There's some of that in Clearspace 1.x, more in 2.x, and then there's RSS feeds, etc.&nbsp; But all of these are highly dependent on users taking control of their content stream.</p>
<p>And that's a new 2.0-ish skill that not too many people at our company have.&nbsp; Sure, we could tell them &quot;here's what you have to do to control the problem&quot;, but we're trying to drive broader engagement and adoption of the platform, and we've had more than a few people new to the environment simply say &quot;I can't handle this social content stream <em>in addition</em> to my email deluge&quot;.</p>
<p>It's one thing when they're exposed to the business-related deluge.&nbsp; It's another thing entirely when it looks like 40-50% of the stream appears to be purely social in nature.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Doesn't make it look like a business platform, which is how it was sold to the company.</p>
<p><strong>Problem #2 -- Naysayers</strong></p>
<p>In physics, every force results in an opposite force.&nbsp; And in driving corporate change, the same generally holds true.&nbsp; I'm not being negative, just practical.</p>
<p>And, not surprisingly, there are those that look at our internal social media platform with a cold, cynical eye.&nbsp; They don't understand, they may be threatened, they're not comfortable, or maybe they're generally concerned.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Collectively, they have &quot;voice&quot;.</p>
<p>And now they have a bit more evidence for their case.</p>
<p><strong>Problem #3 -- The Proficient</strong></p>
<p>We now have upwards of 1,000 people who are truly comfortable and really enjoy the deep end of the pool.&nbsp; They love being exposed to everything.&nbsp; They're very comfortable controlling the content stream.&nbsp; </p>
<p>And they inherently resist any thought of control, policy, etc. -- it just doesn't work for them.&nbsp; And they're quite vocal that the rest of the world has to adapt to this 2.0 world, and they better get on with it, now!</p>
<p>And -- they have a point.&nbsp; But I'm looking at outcome, and less to make a philisophical statement.</p>
<p><strong>We Thought We Had A Fix</strong></p>
<p>We thought we had a handle on this issue originally.&nbsp; We set up a &quot;water cooler&quot; community for off-topic stuff.&nbsp; But we haven't found any way to limit the feed to the home page.</p>
<p>And, even if we could, maybe we shouldn't.&nbsp; </p>
<p>After all, there are people who choose to participate in the big fire hose, and they should be able to.&nbsp; The problem is the default for the broader and less-proficient audience we've got here.&nbsp; </p>
<p><strong>What We're Doing Short Term</strong></p>
<p>A couple of things, really.&nbsp; First, I went to the more -- ahem -- prolific threads, and simply reminded people that everything they write is syndicated up to the corporate feed, and that their insightful comments were widely read by several thousand people.&nbsp; </p>
<p>And that while it's OK to get off topic, please keep in mind that we've got a business platform, and you may want to think twice before an extended off-topic discussion for several reasons, e.g. is this what you do all day at work?</p>
<p>The second thing we're doing is engaging the community.&nbsp; I wrote a blog post outlining the problem and the tradeoffs, and simply asked &quot;what do you all think we should do?&quot;.</p>
<p>People appreciated that we engaged them rather than arbitrarily doing something -- good 2.0 behavior.&nbsp; And, somewhere in the dozens of comments, the discussion became pretty clear: we should take no action to limit discussions on the platform, but we should work towards having a &quot;default&quot; home page for newbies that's a little less intimidating.</p>
<p><strong>So, What Do You Think?</strong></p>
<p>Now that we have a clear &quot;digital divide&quot; in our company with regards to our social productivity platform, what's the ideal compromise position?&nbsp; Or should there be compromise at all?</p>
<p>And -- any proposed solution can't involve a bunch of custom software, nor can it involve hiring and dedicating people to the task.&nbsp; Nor can it involve having tens of thousands of employees learning to control their content stream as a prerequisite for success.</p>
<p>An interesting challenge, to be sure ....</p>
</div>
Ruminations On Justificationtag:typepad.com,2003:post-510943502008-06-09T13:59:51-04:002008-06-09T13:59:51-04:00I've been spending more time than usual thinking about the value we're getting from our internal platform -- how best to describe it, can we get any more, etc. And, slowly, I'm starting to build a mental framework for what...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>I've been spending more time than usual thinking about the value we're getting from our internal platform -- how best to describe it, can we get any more, etc.</p>
<p>And, slowly, I'm starting to build a mental framework for what we're seeing here.</p><p><strong>Incremental vs. Substitutional Value</strong></p>
<p>OK, so I&quot;m making up some new terms here.&nbsp; This is new stuff, so I feel I have the right to do so!</p>
<p>I'm now describing &quot;<strong>substitutional value</strong>&quot; as something we did before, but now we're doing it more effectively.&nbsp; Value is created through doing the same thing as before, only doing it better.</p>
<p>Examples might be having a team discussion on the platform, as opposed to a lengthy set of conference calls, or an in-person set of meetings.&nbsp; Or posting something on a wiki, rather than emailing it (and all its updates!) to a very long distribution list.</p>
<p>At another level, what you're asking people to do is essentially do what they did before, but do it a different (presumably better) way.</p>
<p>In terms of effort, substitutional value seems to have two barriers -- one, the natural resistance to changing an established process, and -- two, enough of a critical mass of proficient users who'd be comfortable doing it the new way.</p>
<p>We can address the second issue by simply getting more and more people comfortable -- and preferring -- interactions on the EMC|ONE platform (as opposed to concalls or whatever).</p>
<p>But the first issue requires a visionary who's willing to put in the effort to drive process change towards the new tool or platform.&nbsp; And we can't really engineer directly for that.</p>
<p>Is creating value through substitution effects a good thing?&nbsp; Sure -- I'll take whatever I can get -- but in the big scheme of things, it might pale behind another form of value generation.</p>
<p>I'm now using the term &quot;<strong>incremental value</strong>&quot; to describe good things that just wouldn't have happened without the platform.&nbsp; They're not replacing something else we're already doing, they're entirely new things.</p>
<p>A connection made between disparate people with similar interests who can help each other.&nbsp; A workforce that knows more about the company and the industry than before.&nbsp; A quintessential feeling of connected-ness that wasn't there before.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Better decisions and outcome because more people participated, not just the invitees or the distro list.&nbsp; Smoking out unforseen problems simply because we posted a plan in a transparent, visible place and someone said &quot;did you think about ...?&quot;</p>
<p>Now, understandably the world isn't black and white, just interesting shades of gray.&nbsp; And, when we point to something that's generating value on EMC|ONE, clearly there are elements of both at work.</p>
<p>But, that being said, the incremental value elements that we're seeing are far outweighing the substitution effects.&nbsp; And that requires a certain imagination from people who are considering this approach, but haven't seen what it can do.</p>
<p>They tend to think in terms of what they know -- only done better.&nbsp; And it's harder to imagine things that we're not doing at all.</p>
<p>I remember several years ago when EMC was first creating a globalized workforce.&nbsp; The argument of the day was &quot;cost effective expertise&quot;, e.g. save money.&nbsp; But the reality was quite different -- we got a vastly talented workforce that could do things in a way we couldn't do in the US, and -- to boot! -- did it in a very different time zone, enabling round-the-clock work.</p>
<p>You go looking for one thing, and you find another, more wonderful, thing.</p>
<p><strong>Content, Conversations and Communities</strong></p>
<p>Way back when -- almost a year ago -- when I set out the priorities for our internal initiatives, I elevated the concept of &quot;community&quot; to the top of the value stack, so to speak.</p>
<p>From my point of view (at the time), there were different levels of social media goodness:</p>
<p>- publishing information that was searchable, taggable, editable, etc. -- yes, that was nice.</p>
<p>- conversations between people who had something to say, who may not know about each other -- yes, that was nice</p>
<p>- but a community of passionate people working together to solve unmet business challenges in a collaborative, unselfish and unpoliticized way -- nirvana, as far as I could see.</p>
<p>If you asked me back then how the weightings would split out, I'd offer up something like 15/15/70.&nbsp; Fifteen percent of the value would come from better information distribution, 15 percent from conversations, and 70 percent from community formation.</p>
<p>Two things happened that are now changing my view of this.</p>
<p>First, I'm seeing more value than I anticipated in the first two categories: information sharing and ad-hoc discussions.</p>
<p>Second, we're seeing a lot of communities form that are all about -- well --&nbsp; sharing information and casual discussions.&nbsp; They're not collaborating on anything per se, other than what I mentioned.</p>
<p>We've spent a lot of money on building an uber-intranet portal, called PowerLink.&nbsp; There is a *lot* of stuff there, all well-managed by a very proficient team.</p>
<p>But I'm starting to meet people who'll come to EMC|ONE first to look around for something, and -- if they don't find what they're looking for -- they'll go over to the corporate internet portal.&nbsp; Not the majority, mind you, but it's started.</p>
<p>The search engine is better.&nbsp; Tagging is a great way to find things.&nbsp; But, unlike the corporate portal, when you find something that's useful or interesting, you also get to meet the people who posted it, shared it, commented on it, etc.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>And finding people who can help you is sometimes more valuable than finding a piece of information on this or that.</em></p>
<p>The value we're getting from &quot;casual conversations&quot; is amazing.&nbsp; Sure, there's a lot of fluff and idle chatter -- so what?&nbsp; But when someone checks in with a &quot;<em>did you know</em>&quot; or &quot;<em>have you thought about</em>&quot; or &quot;<em>how about we</em>&quot; type of discussion -- pure gold.</p>
<p>That doesn't mean we're not getting amazing value out of some of our communities.&nbsp; As an example, we've got a &quot;competitive community&quot; that has fundamentally transformed how we handle competitive analysis at EMC.&nbsp; And we now have a very vibrant VMware community -- as it's a topic that touches just about every discipline in the company.&nbsp; </p>
<p>And there are a few more promising ones we're working on.</p>
<p>I think I was mostly right in targeting &quot;communities&quot; at the top of the value chain in terms of business benefits -- that much is clear.&nbsp; But I think I have to be realistic -- we won't have as many good ones as quickly as I first thought, which has been more-than-outweighed from the benefits from the other types of interactions we're seeing.</p>
<p>I just have to adjust my lens a bit, that's all.</p>
<p><strong>The Bottom Line</strong></p>
<p>Justifying productivity software is hard.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>
<p>Sure, we can build our justification around substitution effects, but -- in all honesty -- they're relatively minor, and I wouldn't be clearing my ROI hurdle as nicely as I am if that's all I went for.</p>
<p>But substitution effects are easy to understand by most people.&nbsp; Saving on X, Y and Z is a simple concept.</p>
<p>The real benefit -- by far -- are incremental benefits -- things that just weren't happening before, and are happening now.&nbsp; Harder for people to visualize, even harder to quantify.&nbsp; But a much bigger pot of business value, based on our experience.</p>
<p>Now that we've got several quarters under our belt, I perhaps underestimated the value around making content easier to find -- and to engage with the people who created it.&nbsp; I also probably underestimated the business value of thousands of public conversations -- all searchable, all join-able.</p>
<p>But I don't think I underestimated the value of communities.&nbsp; And I think that future voyagers in corporate social media proficiency would be well-served by putting them on top of the value hierarchy.</p>
<p>Just don't expect it to be easy, or to have too many of them ... at the start!</p></div>
Community Development Is Hard Worktag:typepad.com,2003:post-509379062008-06-06T16:02:59-04:002008-06-06T16:02:59-04:00So, as we progress along, we still aren't forming "vibrant communities" around business-oriented topics as well as I'd like. That's for a variety of reasons, but one big one stands out -- it's hard work. And bridging this gap is...Chuck Hollis

So, as we progress along, we still aren't forming "vibrant communities" around business-oriented topics as well as I'd like.

That's for a variety of reasons, but one big one stands out -- it's hard work.

And bridging this gap is turning out to be important.

A Lot Can Get Done On Social Software -- Even Without Communities

Even if we used our social productivity software for simply ad-hoc discussions, debates, information-sharing, etc. -- and didn't have well-formed communities -- it'd still be a good thing, and worth every penny.

But one of our original premises was that communities -- groups of active participants contributing to a greater goal -- was at the heart of achieving substantial business value around this 2.0 stuff.

Why?

More and more, we've got topics that span our stovepipes (er, cylinders of excellence), and we need to get more and more people involved.

Getting them involved doesn't just mean reading some stuff we've pushed to you, it means being a part of the conversation, helping out, etc.

Our Experience So Far

Some communities naturally formed. For whatever reasons, we had the right ingredients at hand: a passionate topic, someone who was willing to lead and put in the effort, and willing contributors and participants.

Others stalled. Maybe it wasn't the right (passionate) topic. Or the person who volunteered to lead didn't put in enough effort, or know what to do. Or, perhaps, no one really cared outside of a small group.

Since this is all a learning experience, we're watching, and trying to figure out as much as we can.

We've learned that the persona of the community manager is essential. This person has to be (a) passionate and somewhat knowledgeable of the topic at hand, (b) put in consistent effort for a sustained period of time, and (c) have the type of personality and style that makes other people want to engage, and not push them away.

I, for example, am a lousy community builder. No matter how hard I try, I don't have the sort of personality that gets average folks wanting to participate and engage, even though I meet the first two criteria pretty well.

Gently put, I'm a bit intense for most peoples' tastes ...

Taking an informal survey around EMC, we've got a lot of great people, but not a lot of people who meet all three criteria. And that's gonna be a problem -- especially the "engaging" part.

A related challenge is the delayed or uncertain gratification. We're asking prospective community builders to (a) learn a new set of tools, (b) slave away for hours over many weeks at populating content, (c) use their social capital to invite their friends and colleagues to participate -- and maybe getting nothing in return.

That's a hard ask of people, no?

And Then There's The Win-Win Challenge

Many potential topics and communities are what I'd call asymmetrical -- there's an imbalance in the producer/consumer relationship.

Put differently, for lots of different topics, people are comfortable just leeching off of whatever's out there, and don't really feel the need to contribute, discuss, share, etc. As a result, the "community" tends to be a 1.0-ish content site, with not much collaboration or discussion going on.

But when you do get the win-win scenario going, the results can be astounding.

Here at EMC, we're a bit obsessed with competition. And, if you think about it, good competitive information is like assembling pieces of a puzzle. Sure, you can get a lot from a centralized resource, but as everyone learns a piece of new information about what this competitor or that competitor is doing, saying, etc. -- assembling the pieces creates far more value.

As a result, this community (actually, a cluster of communities) has a situation where people are contributing freely what they know, what they've heard, what they think, etc. to the broader community -- because I think they see the rewards of doing so.

No need to get people to contribute to this one ... now, how do we expand this idea to other areas?

An Alternative View

Maybe we're trying to encourage something that doesn't want to be encouraged.

Maybe the reality of the situation is that people will self-organize into communities when they want to, and not before.

I hope not. My desire is that -- over time -- we can become more proficient at targeting high-value potential communities, and causing them to form with more precision and regularity.

I'm beginning to think that the solution lies more along HR lines than anything else -- how do you teach people to lead teams and groups that span their day-to-day charter?

And -- come to think of it -- we don't do so well at that either ;-)

In Pursuit Of Process Changetag:typepad.com,2003:post-509347722008-06-06T14:57:40-04:002008-06-06T14:57:40-04:00I was discussing with one of our execs the progress we'd been making on social media proficiency internally. And he asked a great question that made me think: "So, has anyone fundamentally changed their work processes because of the platform?"...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>I was discussing with one of our execs the progress we'd been making on social media proficiency internally.</p>
<p>And he asked a great question that made me think:</p>
<p><em>&quot;So, has anyone fundamentally changed their work processes because of the platform?&quot;</em></p>
<p>And I realized this is the next frontier on what's turning out to be a large-scale social engineering project.</p><p><strong>Getting Business Value Out Of Our Social Software</strong></p>
<p>As we make progress in this journey, I've got my eye out for different catagories of business value we're seeing.&nbsp; I suppose, at the same time, I should also be keeping my eye out for business value we're NOT seeing yet.</p>
<p>And, as I've mentioned before, we're seeing business value -- in many forms -- across the board:</p>
<ul><li>People with specific interests are finding other people with similar interests</li>
<li>Rather than searching big content repositories, people are asking other people for help and answers</li>
<li>A pan-organizational &quot;social fabric&quot; has been created that wasn't really there before</li>
<li>Folks who spend time on the platform are better educated -- and more engaged -- in EMC' business</li></ul>
<p>And more.&nbsp; And, just to be clear, there's no shortage of business benefits -- I still stand behind the broad assertion that this has been one of the most ROI-positive IT projects I've seen in my career.</p>
<p><em>Interesting &quot;value nugget&quot; of the week:</em>&nbsp; </p>
<p>EMC runs a healthy program to bring a large number of interns and co-op students into the company.&nbsp; They started introducing themselves to each other on the platform.&nbsp; </p>
<p>What started with &quot;name, rank, serial number&quot; blossomed into a wonderfully diverse set of conversations about careers, favorite hangouts, what it means to work at EMC, what is everybody doing, and so on.</p>
<p>I would argue that -- whatever millions that EMC spends on this intern/coop program -- we've now made it 10-20% more valuable, simply because we connected people to each other, and connected them all to the broader company.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>At zero incremental cost</em>.</p>
<p>But we want more.&nbsp; Much more.</p>
<p><strong>Fundamental Process Change Is Hard</strong></p>
<p>So, if we look around, and adopt the &quot;glass is half empty&quot; mindset, it's not pretty.</p>
<p>A lot of documents still get pushed around in linear workflows, rather than collaborative discussions.</p>
<p>There are many people who still think that meetings require a meeting room, or a concall bridge.</p>
<p>We still are largely communicating with internal audiences by pushing stuff at them, rather than inviting them to participate and engage.</p>
<p>Only a small number of people have figured out that writing blog posts are a better way to communicate and engage than, say, writing formal status reports that rarely get read anyway.</p>
<p>Put differently, there appears to be two tranches of work behavior that are under transition here:</p>
<p>1 -- the &quot;engagement&quot; phase where people get comfortable sharing, communicating, etc. on an online platform.</p>
<p>2 -- the &quot;re-engineering&quot; phase where people wake up and realize that there's a better way to do traditional work processes across the enterprise.</p>
<p>We're doing OK at the first one, and terribly at the second one.</p>
<p><strong>Why Is This?</strong></p>
<p>First, until we get a critical mass of people who feel comfortable in engaging on the platform (and the behaviors that entails), we can't really re-engineer many of our larger-scale business processes.</p>
<p>Going back in history, we had the same problem with email -- we needed enough people to use it before we could start re-engineering how we worked.</p>
<p>So, I guess I could give us a pass, and say &quot;be patient&quot;.&nbsp; But that's too easy.</p>
<p>Second, there has to be an external incentive to change a process.&nbsp; Business processes within large organizations are very stable and entrenched.&nbsp; There's a lot of effort required to do things differently.</p>
<p>And, of course, there's the natural human tendency to not fix what ain't broke, right?&nbsp; Sure, the way we do things today is inefficient, inconvenient, ineffective -- but it works, right?&nbsp; And the company is doing OK, right?&nbsp; So why mess with things?</p>
<p>I think it's that second characteristic that will prove harder to change.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, in my experience, business processes aren't amenable to change unless there's an external crisis looming: the company is unprofitable, or new management is taking over, or a competitor is raising the ante in your business.</p>
<p>It's not too often that people sit around a room when the weather's fine and say &quot;how can we re-engineer things to make them better?&quot;.&nbsp; &nbsp;And, if they do, the drugs seem to wear off pretty fast.</p>
<p>And there's a third aspect to this that I'm mindful of: new business processes get created all the time.&nbsp; Someone has a new problem, and there's no pre-fab answer, so you have to get creative.</p>
<p>And, to be fair, we're scooping up more than our fair share of these new, emergent business processes.</p>
<p><strong>So, What Will The Lever Be?</strong></p>
<p>I don't want to wait until my company is really stressed about something to force a change in process.&nbsp; But I do believe there needs to be some tension in the air to force a productive change discussion.</p>
<p><em>I think I know what that lever will be.</em></p>
<p>I think we can market to ambitious middle managers -- looking to climb the ladder -- looking to make an impression, and get noticed.&nbsp; We can position &quot;reengineering business processes around social software&quot; as a way to be cool, and show some next-gen leadership.</p>
<p>We tend to hire people who are fairly ambitious and relatively competitive.&nbsp; I think that -- by harnessing into everyone's latent need to show off a bit -- we can spark some friendly internal competition around demonstrating leadership ... ;-)</p>
<p>The question is -- how?&nbsp; Do we have some sort of formal (yet fun) competition?&nbsp; Do we message in a variety of forums?&nbsp; Do we make some sort of Innovation Award For Social Media?</p>
<p>I'm not quite sure of the best way to approach this.&nbsp; </p>
<p>But I'll let you know what we end up doing, and how it goes ...</p></div>
Jeopardy Aftermathtag:typepad.com,2003:post-505634582008-05-29T12:39:20-04:002008-05-29T12:39:20-04:00I think you've figured out by now that I really like what Jive Software is doing in this social productivity software space. Nobody's perfect, but they're still on top, in my book. And -- at Jive -- there's nobody as...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>I think you've figured out by now that I really like what <a href="http://www.jivesoftware.com/">Jive Software</a> is doing in this social productivity software space.&nbsp; Nobody's perfect, but they're still on top, in my book.</p>
<p>And -- at Jive -- there's nobody as fun and creative as Sam Lawrence.&nbsp; If you aren't <a href="http://gobigalways.com/">following his blog</a>, you should.</p>
<p>Sam created a uniquely Sam-ish marketing event recently: a <a href="http://gobigalways.com/juicy-tidbits-from-yesterdays-jeopardy/">Jeopardy-like panel</a> with noted luminaries, including my favorite <a href="http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/">Jeremiah Owyang</a>, another must-follow visionary in this space.</p>
<p>I wasn't able to participate, but an incredible list of questions was created that I found fascinating.&nbsp; I also realized I had some specific points of view on many of them.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Matter of fact, I felt <em>compelled </em>to respond to most of them ... ;-)</p>
<p>So, not to hijack anyone's thoughts, but I thought it would be interesting to cull out a few, and offer up my personal thoughts, based on our experiences here.</p><p><strong>So -- You Ask .. And I Attempt An Answer !!</strong></p>
<p><em>Do you find that customers come asking for your advice thinking “Strategy” or thinking “Campaign”? (short term versus long term)</em> </p>
<p>I think that &quot;customers&quot; in this term refer to the customers of either software vendors or consultancies, just to clarify.</p>
<p>I would offer that if you're thinking in terms of campaign, you're thinking about it way too small, and most likely, you'll be very disappointed with the results.</p>
<p>What's better, a quality campaign, or a quality strategy?&nbsp; A customer satisfaction campaign or a customer satisfaction strategy?&nbsp; A competitive campaign, or a competitive strategy?</p>
<p>If you think this whole 2.0 think is big (and many people do), &quot;strategy&quot; is the right way to think about it.&nbsp; Campaigns have a beginning, and end, and defined inputs and outputs.&nbsp; Strategies don't really end, and can evolve in interesting ways to achieve very broad -- and surprising -- objectives.</p>
<p><em>In context to my previous question, how should an organization address compliance matters within the social space, e.g. with respect to the information exchanged ?</em> </p>
<p>Interestingly enough, I have a point of view on this, not only because it's my issue at EMC, but EMC is a vendor of information compliance solutions, we have a compliance office, etc.</p>
<p>The trick here is not to single out social productivity from other forms of electronic communication.&nbsp; Whatever policy and capabilities you have for email, files, IM, et. al. -- should be applied to social conversations, whether inside or outside of the firewall.</p>
<p>To single out blogs, wikis, discussion, forums, etc. as &quot;something special&quot; misses the point from a corporate responsibility perspective -- it's all digital information -- don't discriminate.&nbsp; As an example of something that EMC sells along these lines (that we're using internally, BTW, take a look at <a href="http://www.emc.com/solutions/business-need/compliance-ediscovery/ediscovery.htm">this</a>.).</p>
<p>Early on, we started thinking along those lines.&nbsp; Smart move on our part ...</p>
<p><em>For an online community, what are some of the more effective tools you’ve seen that drive interaction? Blogs, detailed profiles, instant messaging?</em> </p>
<p>Answer: none of the above.&nbsp; What makes this stuff work is passionate people who want to express and share their points of views on things they care about.&nbsp; &nbsp; They write great blogs, fill out their profiles, use a variety of communication techniques, etc.</p>
<p>Find the passionate people, get them engaged, the rest kind of happens naturally.</p>
<p><em>How do free tools work such as google analytics for a smaller company?</em> </p>
<p>I'm not going to answer this, because I think -- given the problem at hand -- no one's come up with a way to quantifiably measure a qualitative experience in this domain.&nbsp; And that's what we're all after -- quality, not quantity.</p>
<p><em>Have you seen prediction markets catch on as a market research tool?</em> </p>
<p>We've experimented a bit, and come away with the conclusion that they're extremely useful -- about 50% of the time.&nbsp; Sure, sometimes the crowd is wise, but other times they're completely wrong.&nbsp; Which is why we have winners and losers on Wall Street, right?</p>
<p><em>Rather than just open blogging, having people submit content and someone monitoring what goes up on the blog?</em></p>
<p>Yuck.&nbsp; Don't bother.&nbsp; The best blogs are written by passionate people who care enough to express and share.&nbsp; I've seen these sorts of blogs, and I find them of a poorer quality -- and hence less useful -- than those written by passionate people.</p>
<p>Monitoring?&nbsp; We use our &quot;social computer&quot; for that -- our blogging community has gotten into the habit of looking out for our own in terms of feedback, and our visible bloggers have gotten into the habit of using that community if they're unsure how something will be perceived.</p>
<p><em>Your thoughts about hiring a “ghost” blogger to represent your company (in conjunction with an IT media firm)?</em> </p>
<p>What an awful thought.&nbsp; Blogs are about authenticity, transparency, openness.&nbsp; Hiring someone to portray you in that manner just rubs me the wrong way.&nbsp; And, besides, anyone who's tried this has decided it wasn't that good an idea -- based on what I've heard.</p>
<p>Imagine you hired someone to represent you on an online dating service.&nbsp; Sooner or later, the truth would come out, wouldn't it?</p>
<p><em>What are your thoughts on controlling content of a blog?</em> </p>
<p>We don't, because it wouldn't be a blog then, would it?&nbsp; It'd be some corporate publication, and we've got PLENTY OF THOSE ALREADY, thank you.</p>
<p>I tell people that the oats look much better before they go through the horse.</p>
<p>We ask people to use good judgment.&nbsp; We remind them that they're representing our company, and all of us who work here.&nbsp; It's a big responsibility, so don't take it lightly, folks.&nbsp; We can tolerate a few mistakes, differences of opinion, slightly inappropriate wording, etc. -- that's part of the fun.</p>
<p>There was one guy we had to go to and gently suggest that perhaps his blogging activities weren't really helping himself -- or EMC.&nbsp; He responded pretty well, given the circumstances.</p>
<p><em>So are we going to start seeing people construct bogus negative comments just to show validity?</em> </p>
<p>Haven't seen that yet -- in any form.&nbsp; You don't have to be negative to be a real person, do you?&nbsp; We do see a few well-intentioned criticisms and suggestions from our bloggers -- but it's offered in the right spirit.</p>
<p>We tell people there's a difference between disagreeing and being disagreeable.</p>
<p><em>Can we take a stand against ROI because it is quantitative and this is clearly a qualitative realm? We need to help businesses re-frame their language.</em></p>
<p>Yeah, I agree with that, but in the world I work with, I do have to sketch out ROIs for certain individuals.&nbsp; It's not hard to do -- if you take their ROI concerns in isolation.</p>
<p>As an example, EMC spends a lot of money flying smart, articulate people around to get in front of customers and have some pretty interesting conversations.&nbsp; There's never enough smart people to go around, and travelling is expensive on several levels.</p>
<p>What if we could have our smart people write a blog?&nbsp; Let's see: increased value of that person, less travel (or travel more effective), etc.&nbsp; Incremental cost -- near zero.&nbsp; Additional risk -- near zero.&nbsp; </p>
<p>BTW, this is the same person you put in front of important people every day -- unscripted, and unmonitored.</p>
<p>Now, the actual ROI expands to multiple additional dimensions, but -- why bother with all that?&nbsp; That's enough for the ROI-interested person.&nbsp; Move on.</p>
<p><em>When starting “small” how do we keep interest of our publics?</em> </p>
<p>The natural tendency is to think big.&nbsp; However, communities tend to form small and grow.&nbsp; The single most important aspect -- that's turning out to be very hard -- is to teach people about community dynamics.&nbsp; It's about what the community wants, not what you want, and finding that balance.</p>
<p>And, if anyone has a magic pill that I could prescribe to about 5,000 people here, I'm all ears ...</p>
<p><em>Manager for internal communities? Yes. They need fostering and managing just like an external one. <br />Is it possible to apply that approach to internal rollouts?</em> </p>
<p>This has turned out to be the single hardest thing for us.&nbsp; Community developments skills (or interest in acquiring them!) is an exceedingly rare commodity, at least in our culture.&nbsp; We're trying different things, and making progress, but this has turned out to be the hardest thing.</p>
<p>So, better give it some thought.&nbsp; People with psychology or sociology backgrounds are becoming more interesting in this dynamic, no?&nbsp; We look for these people who have the natural characteristics, and we work with what we have.</p>
<p><em>How do you sell social software when there are so many free software programs out there?</em> </p>
<p>Easy.&nbsp; You get better time-to-value with packaged software than other alternatives.&nbsp; And it's all about creating value, right?</p>
<p>As an example, at EMC we had multiple &quot;free&quot; solutions at our disposal, including EMC's own eRoom, Microsoft SharePoint, and lord-knows-what-else.</p>
<p>We elected to buy something.&nbsp; You should too.</p>
<p><em>How does one justify the resource costs for the types of roles talked about in this discussion? Are there any reports or research that support the justification for such resources?</em> </p>
<p>I am now framing the justification in terms of &quot;acceleration&quot;.&nbsp; Sooner or later, our company will become proficient at this stuff at a natural rate, whether we focus on it or not.</p>
<p>What you're paying for is accelerating that proficiency.&nbsp; Now, that assumes that proficiency drives business value -- you just want it sooner than later, don't you?</p>
<p>I haven't found any useful reports or research that justify such resources.&nbsp; I'm OK with that, since -- by the time there's a nice body of quantifiable research -- it's old hat, you're late to the game, and you've missed the opportunity to create unique business value for your company.</p>
<p>As an example, I'm sure there are great studies on the value of email in large corporations.&nbsp; But that isn't really an interesting topic these days, is it?&nbsp; It's kind of assumed.</p>
<p><em>Where do you see social networking/communities being driven from within the enterprise? Marketing? PR? Marcom? Other?</em> </p>
<p>Funny, it started as a &quot;marketing thing&quot;, but the marketing guys at EMC have been eclipsed by other functions.&nbsp; Engineering groups, for example, have turned out to be enormous users of this stuff.&nbsp; Customer service.&nbsp; Our Global Services consulting organizations.&nbsp; HR.&nbsp; And so on.</p>
<p>That's why we -- early on -- saw this as a corporate-wide capability (like email!) and not limited to any particular business function.&nbsp; You might consider the same.</p>
<p><em>Do training costs fall in the soft costs area?</em> </p>
<p>First, anything you need to be trained on to use isn't gonna fill the bill.&nbsp; However, we've invested in a &quot;user enablement&quot; person who's a friendly, knowledgeable person and has all the time in the world to answer your question, show you how it's done, explain the rules of the road, etc.</p>
<p>We wanted a very social experience.&nbsp; Think about that for a moment ...</p>
<p>This person also produces self-help materials -- wikis, short videos, webinars, etc. -- based on the questions he receives.</p>
<p>Works out very well -- short money invested, big benefit.&nbsp; Note that this person is not part of IT, or our training organization.&nbsp; They're on a special team with a special mission -- make this fun!</p>
<p><em>What are the typical ROI metrics used to justify investment in such a tool/initiative?</em> </p>
<p>Strategically, it wasn't a question for us.&nbsp; We knew we had to do something, and quick.&nbsp; However, different stakeholders are looking for different kinds of ROI, and we've elected to take them one-at-a-time and produce context-sensitive justification around their personal hot buttons, as described above.</p>
<p>Trying to do an intergalactic, all-aspects, all-audiences ROI on this stuff is just too hard, and isn't all that useful, anyway.</p>
<p><em>The numbers of companies having a community strategy is quantitative. Aren’t we missing the qualitative?</em> </p>
<p>Yes, abosolutely.&nbsp; I am very skeptical about the percentages myself.&nbsp; Now, in the course of my day job, I meet literally hundreds of companies a year.&nbsp; I'd put the real number (e.g. get it and are being honest) in the low single digits.&nbsp; Or, maybe they're doing something, but it's one small group to solve one small problem.</p>
<p><em>What do you think about having a so called “blog” without comments for an organization that’s afraid of receiving negative comments?</em> </p>
<p>I think they need to get over it.&nbsp; People are saying negative things anyway -- it's your choice as to whether you want to pretend it isn't happening, or you want to engage.&nbsp; And a corporate culture -- or brand -- that can intelligently handle criticism -- well, that's a good thing, isn't it?</p>
<p>I will say -- based on my experiences with external blogging -- there are people who seem to be mixing commenting with alcohol and/or other medications.&nbsp; I think I'm doing them a service by deleting their comments -- I think it's common courtesy.</p>
<p>BWI -- Blogging While Intoxicated -- not a pretty thing.</p>
<p><em>Documentum now provides a release that enables discussion threads on documents. And companies like Jive, obviously, enable discussions as well as documents. Will there be a sensible convergence in this space, so that you don’t sacrifice capabilities in either the document management or the discussion forum categories? </em></p>
<p>Oh yes.&nbsp; We're not there yet, but this convergence will absolutely happen -- there's no question in my mind.&nbsp; And, for what it's worth -- I'm very close to driving this convergence at EMC -- both as a user of technology, but also as a senior exec.</p>
<p>I see this as a &quot;social layer&quot; over existing content management capabilities -- one shouldn't exist without the other.</p>
<p><em>Putting people first sounds easy, but can the panelists talk about the cultural challenges with actually doing this?</em> </p>
<p>Well, we're doing it, does that count?</p>
<p>Seriously though, you're right, this is more about social engineering of the new enterprise rather than anything else.&nbsp; And people, being social animals, will model their behavior after people they respect.</p>
<p>The trick is to find a critical mass of such &quot;social leaders&quot; in parts of the enterprise, get them to use the new tools, demonstrate the new behaviors, and others will follow.</p>
<p>It takes time, but it works.&nbsp; We're about 9 months into it, and you can visibly see the cultural changes starting to radiate throughout the organization in concentric circles.&nbsp; Big fun.</p>
<p><em>What are some ways to measure the success of online communities?</em> </p>
<p>I don't know.&nbsp; How do you measure the success of a really good party?&nbsp; Or a really good conversation?&nbsp; Or a very intelligent point of view?</p>
<p>I mean, Nike has had a great experience, but they've got a very specific community for a very specific purpose.</p>
<p>I think we'll get better on this in the future, but I for one am not waiting for better measurement to go do the right thing.</p>
<p><em>What government bodies have online communities / strategies?</em> </p>
<p>I've encountered a few, but they're definitely not in the majority.&nbsp; And I think they're taking a fair amount of career risk in sticking their neck out.</p>
<p>But, viewed alternatively, if you see government's role as serving the people, you've gotta believe that we'll see a lot more of this in the future.</p>
<p><em>How do you regain interest in an already established social media outlet, which has gone through a lame duck period?</em> </p>
<p>You put energy and focus into it.&nbsp; The lame duck phenom is nothing more than people losing interest all around.&nbsp; Keep it interesting, keep it engaging -- people will come back.</p>
<p>Some people seem to think that this stuff runs itself.&nbsp; It doesn't.</p>
<p><em>How can we increase the quality of social content in terms of relevance without putting too much burden on the community members?</em> </p>
<p>Competing for recognition, prizes, etc. seems to work really well.&nbsp; </p>
<p>It's not a burden if they want to do it.</p>
<p><em>Your thoughts on utilizing social networking to grow your customer base in a small business/mid-size business environment that primarily has relationships with customers managed by individual sales/account managers. How can social networking be useful to help in such situations to grow the business?</em> </p>
<p>I think you have to be prepared to bring something to the table to make the community valuable.</p>
<p>I meet people everyday that think that if we put a forum out there, somehow it will magically attract proficient, contributing users, with little or no intellectual investment on our part.&nbsp; And, every quarter, we seem to put another one out there that fails along the same lines.</p>
<p>I know that when Amex tried to do something similar, they invested in people and content that actually was of value to their target audience -- they brought something to the table.</p>
<p>So, what do you bring to the table that an SMB person would find engaging?&nbsp; Other than a discussion around your product or offering?</p>
<p><em>We recently switched our external (student) communities to Jive Clearspace Community, and we’re trying to decide whether to use that same instance for internal collaboration, or to use Jive Clearspace or Microsoft SharePoint Server. We are also trying to figure how how to bridge internal &amp; external collaboration.</em> </p>
<p>Well, we see internal and external communities as the same continuum.&nbsp; We want to use Clearspace for both.&nbsp; Sure, maybe we'll have separate instances for different reasons, but the user experience ought to be pretty much the same.</p>
<p>Bridging the domains isn't intrinsically hard; you've just got to find someone who's willing to bridge the gap.&nbsp; The technology supports it; finding someone who's going to put the time into it is another matter.</p>
<p><em>Have u conducted any research on the companies which have used social software effectively? If yes, would you provide some examples.</em> </p>
<p>Ummm -- no one's researched us, but I'd offer that EMC is starting to do just that.&nbsp; So much more to do, though ...</p>
<p><em>More openness internally - less sensitivity. Great opportunity to teach E2.0 behaviors readying folks to move outside</em> </p>
<p>Whoever offered this comment -- you nailed it!&nbsp; It's all about skills, behaviors and mindset.&nbsp; And, if you can't make this stuff work internally, you have no business whatsoever going external.</p>
<p><em>How do you position Social Platforms within the myriad of forms of collaboration (messaging, communications, docs, etc) without making it just another tools to remember ?</em> </p>
<p>Before we implemented -- this was a big question.&nbsp; </p>
<p>After we implemented -- the questions just went away.</p>
<p>Technically speaking, we position this technology as </p>
<ul><li>&quot;asynchronous&quot; -- you can interact on your own schedule, unlike concalls, IM, etc. and more like email</li>
<li>&quot;one to many&quot; -- a group discussion, unlike phone calls, or emails with small numbers of recipients</li>
<li>&quot;researchable&quot; -- all information is available at any time, to any one</li>
<li>&quot;engageable&quot; -- if you're curious, go talk to the people who were contributing -- that's what you really want anyway, right?</li></ul>
<p>Or, you can just wait until they see it up and running, and they'll get it.</p>
<p><em>Are companies bringing business partners into their networks?</em> </p>
<p>Not yet, but we will be soon.&nbsp; The level of capability and investment is turning out to be significantly higher than what we needed for internal proficiency.</p>
<p><em>Costs - has anyone looked at the percentage of total costs that are accounted for by technology versus people costs?</em> </p>
<p>For our internal use:</p>
<p>Technology costs -- very low (at least for us, and that's compared with other technology projects we routinely undertake).&nbsp; People costs -- 3-4 dedicated people, so that's a bit more significant.</p>
<p><em>What do you think about the need to “connect” the inside and outside (towards customers/partners) of social interaction &amp; collaboration?</em> </p>
<p>Yep -- that's the goal state -- you get it.&nbsp; But we're starting with our side of the conversation (internal) first.</p>
<p><em>Is there a future for a merge between intra and extranet?</em> </p>
<p>Ours is currently merged to a reasonably high degree.&nbsp; It was a pain in the patootie.&nbsp; The trick was to categorize all content types (using Documentum, naturally), and teach people to categorize upon creation.</p>
<p><em>What industries are more appropriate for building communities? Do you see any differences in how people interact in the technical/scientific space (maybe not as open to participate in a community)?</em> </p>
<p>Do you have a high proportion of passionate knowledge workers?&nbsp; You're a candidate.&nbsp; It's that simple -- at least to me.</p>
<p><em>Is it better to try to build your own online community or just sponsor and get involved with independent social networks that already exist in your industry? Which has more traction?</em> </p>
<p>They're not mutually exclusive, and the same set of &quot;passionate engagers&quot; are doing both.</p>
<p><em>Which department typically heads up social software? IT, Marketing….?</em> </p>
<p>At EMC, I work in marketing, but I don't think of it as a marketing problem.&nbsp; We're doing it for the whole company, and not just the marketing folks.&nbsp; We all see it as a corporate initiative.</p>
<p>I met a guy who's been very successful at this as well, and he worked for an IT function.&nbsp; But it wasn't your normal company, nor your normal IT group, and he wasn't your average guy ;-)&nbsp; BTW, I'm not your average marketing guy, either ;-)</p>
<p>HR usually turns out to be the most passionate about this stuff, but struggles to spread its use beyond the HR group.</p>
<p>I would say -- find someone who's very influential and very passionate about this stuff, and go from there.</p>
<p><em>Can one social software offering adequately serve as both enterprise and extranet, or are they really different enough that they need to be separate?</em> </p>
<p>We believe the answer needs to be &quot;yes&quot;, so we're going down that path with Jive.</p>
<p>I<em> have heard that Social Networks for businesses can lower support costs due to self service. Are there any hard facts to backup this claim? Also, any employee retention facts due to Social Networks</em></p>
<p>We have hard facts based on our own experience that validates both statements.&nbsp; However, our perceived ROI goes far, far beyond that.</p>
<p>Be careful on what you choose for justification.&nbsp; If you build your communities with the sole purpose of call deflection -- as an example -- you'll perhaps miss the bigger benefit, which is more customers, happier customers -- who tend to spend more ;-)</p>
<p><em>What is best practice for providing Search across a Enterprise-created support knowledgebase and community-authored content?</em> </p>
<p>We'll be using our own Document-based capability for this.&nbsp; Not a hard problem for us.</p>
<p>However, tags are turning out to be better, and -- even better -- being able to ask someone for advice, like &quot;what should I be looking at?&quot;.</p>
<p><em>What have you found to be the biggest unexpected benefit, or use of Business Social Software?What are the critical success factors for implementing a social network in a “legally sensitive” industry vertical like pharma, healthcare or finance?</em> </p>
<p>For me, it was the cultural change.&nbsp; We're a better company now.&nbsp; And -- interestingly enough -- the people who are engaging in the platform tell us they're getting smarter about the company, our industry, etc.&nbsp; They're better connected to each other.&nbsp; They like working here.&nbsp; They're rapidly evolving as the leaders of tomorrow -- far faster than before.</p>
<p>It's hard to describe -- it's almost magical.&nbsp; And I'm reluctant to discuss it, because I end up sounding all preachy and cuddly-wuddly.&nbsp; But it is an extremely powerful effect, and shouldn't be discounted.</p>
<p><em>Where can I buy the Enterprise Octopus?</em> </p>
<p>Yeah -- I want one too .... </p>
<p><strong>And A Final Note</strong></p>
<p>These are great discussions -- anyone want to start a wiki on this?</p></div>
A Big Leap Forward?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-502804082008-05-22T17:21:55-04:002008-05-22T17:21:55-04:00Sorry I haven't been so active on this blog lately. Why? Well, it's all going pretty well -- no news is good news, right? Both quantitatively and qualitatively, the platform continues to grow, and grow, and grow. But recently, a...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Sorry I haven't been so active on this blog lately.</p>
<p>Why?&nbsp; Well, it's all going pretty well -- no news is good news, right?</p>
<p>Both quantitatively and qualitatively, the platform continues to grow, and grow, and grow.</p>
<p>But recently, a new initiative got kicked off that's poised to take our company's social media proficiency into a much higher gear.</p>
<p>And it's just a bit scary ...</p><p><strong>The Challenge Of Executive Engagement</strong></p>
<p>Put bluntly, we don't see a lot of VP-types on the platform.&nbsp; Some of them are lurking -- I know it -- but I don't see them weighing in, sharing thoughts, starting discussions, etc.</p>
<p>I suppose I could write a few posts on why that might be.</p>
<p>And, I suppose one could debate that excessive &quot;executive engagement&quot; might put a bit of a damper on what's turned into a freewheeling, open, transparent discussion on literally thousands of topics.</p>
<p>But I am of the mind that -- ultimately -- we'll need our more senior management to engage a bit.</p>
<p><strong>Why This Is Turning Out To Be Important</strong></p>
<p>First, we need our leadership team to be very aware of trends that affect our industry.&nbsp; Web 2.0, social media, social computing, et. al. -- well, it's a big trend.&nbsp; It not only affects what products and services we'll be offering, but -- more importantly -- it directly affects how we'll offer them.</p>
<p>Second, as a new way of doing things (whether behind the firewall, or externally engaging), it's a powerful and potent tool.&nbsp; It'd be nice to have everyone understand what that tool is capable of.</p>
<p>Third, as the &quot;keepers of the corporate culture&quot;, the cultural aspects that are brought forward through the use of social productivity software (transparency, openness, engagement, etc.) are good ones.</p>
<p>And, of course, when they figure out how to master this stuff, they'll probably find themselves far more productive in the getting-things-done department, which I'm finding is working pretty well for me.</p>
<p>But the biggest reason -- by far -- is that our leaderhsip team really doesn't get together that much to build relationships, discuss stuff, share best practices, etc.&nbsp; And, when we do, it's usually in a huge meeting room with lots of presenters on stage -- hardly the ideal environment for dialogue and discussion.</p>
<p>Wouldn't it be great if we could discuss company strategy and execution -- as a team -- on-line, when we had the time and interest?</p>
<p><strong>The Big Idea</strong></p>
<p>Jack Mollen, our head of HR, is a pretty visionary guy.&nbsp; Way back when, he was one of the key sponsors behind this social media proficiency initiative I'm working on now.</p>
<p>One of the more important and visible things that Jack's team does is run Executive Education for the company.&nbsp; Traditionally, this has taken the form of a well-produced 2 day off-site around a few key issues the company is facing.</p>
<p>We get the context, we get to work together as teams on exercises, we get to debate and discuss and share -- all very good stuff.</p>
<p>But it could be better.&nbsp; Imagine if we grafted social media concepts to this program?</p>
<p>Maybe have the teams review -- and discuss -- the material and issue before ever setting foot in a meeting room?&nbsp; Or keep the discussion -- and the initiatives -- moving forward far after the event?</p>
<p>Eventually, maybe the focal point of executive education becomes the online discussion, and the physical meetings just reinforce and enhance the online experience.</p>
<p>Better yet, we can all put more energy into acting as a team, simply because we don't have to clear our calendars for two days to do this -- we can fit it in when and where we have a few moments.</p>
<p>Simply put, Jack wants to build a &quot;executive leadership community&quot; at EMC, using this platform.&nbsp; </p>
<p>When he approached me on the idea, I only had two words: &quot;I'm in!&quot;.</p>
<p><em>A bit scary, but very cool, don't you think?</em></p>
<p><strong>Strategic Benefits Are Everywhere</strong></p>
<p>If we can pull this off -- even partially -- think of the goodness that could happen.</p>
<p>We'll get a leadership team that directly understands what this stuff is all about -- because they'll be using it themselves.</p>
<p>We'll probably see a different flavor of management style emerge (Leadership 2.0?) over a reasonably short period of time.</p>
<p>And -- best of all -- we'll have a executive leadership team that directly engages with each other -- on an ongoing basis -- around making EMC more successful.</p>
<p><strong>But This Is Gonna Be Hard</strong></p>
<p>One challenge is that this is being driven by HR.&nbsp; They're great people, but we might need a more senior executive sponsorship model to get the party going.</p>
<p>And, when I say &quot;executive sponsorship&quot;, I mean a few people with big, honkin' titles getting on the platform and driving a few discussions.&nbsp; A hands-off sponsorship model won't work here.&nbsp; That might be hard for a few people.</p>
<p>Our first round of topics and content were largely things that HR wanted to talk about.&nbsp; Some of it's interesting, some of it less so.&nbsp; For this to be successful, the discussions are going to have to reflect the needs of the community, right?&nbsp; </p>
<p>And, let's face it, this is a new environment for most of these people.&nbsp; It's going to take some coaching and push-pull to get people to open up and start contributing.</p>
<p>But I think it's going to be worth the effort. </p>
<p><em>And even if it's not 100% successful, we're going to learn a lot in the process, aren't we?</em></p></div>
Mobile Productivitytag:typepad.com,2003:post-507879922008-05-20T07:15:21-04:002008-05-20T07:15:21-04:00I'm writing this post from my BlackBerry as II sit waitbing for my plane to depart. The future of social software is most definitely mobile.Chuck Hollis

I'm writing this post from my BlackBerry as II sit waitbing for my plane to depart. The future of social software is most definitely mobile.

Social Software: Freestanding or Layered?tag:typepad.com,2003:post-497877982008-05-13T07:55:47-04:002008-05-13T07:55:47-04:00Had an interesting phone interview the other day, and we got into the topic above, which I found interesting. We both agreed that we were going to see far more social software in the enterprise in the coming years. The...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Had an interesting phone interview the other day, and we got into the topic above, which I found interesting.</p>
<p>We both agreed that we were going to see far more social software in the enterprise in the coming years.&nbsp; The question was more about architecture -- would these software packages be purchased and deployed as free-standing entities, or would they be thought more in terms of a &quot;layer&quot; over something else already in the enterprise.</p>
<p>And, if you're aspiring to be a social media proficiency practitioner (as I am) -- <em>or a vendor that's selling to people like me</em> -- the answer might matter to you.</p><p><strong>Enterprise Buying Patterns</strong></p>
<p>If you listen to software vendors who are trying to sell in the enterprise, they'll usually make it sound like all sorts of large, important companies are buying their software.</p>
<p>However, if you dig down a bit, the truth is more usually that some group or another within that large organization made a purchasing decision.&nbsp; It wasn't what I'd call a corporate decision.</p>
<p>As an example, let's take SAP -- a large, enterprise ERP platform.&nbsp; No single group or department within a corporation will go out and deploy SAP -- it just doesn't make sense.&nbsp; 100% of their customers are probably &quot;corporate decisions&quot; rather than &quot;group decisions&quot; within a large company.</p>
<p>To take the opposite to an extreme, I happen to use SanDisk USB memory sticks.&nbsp; Does that mean that EMC Corporation - <em>a Fortune 500 company!!</em> -- uses SanDisk USB memory sticks?&nbsp; Technically yes, but I think you get my point.</p>
<p>Why does this matter for social software?</p>
<p>Because I think there's a big difference between some engineering group putting in a wiki for their team, and a large corporation making a strategic decision for all their employees.&nbsp; Trust me, the buying criteria will be very, very different.</p>
<p>If I'm selling to a small group, I'd want an offering that's focused on price, ease of installation, price, ease of management, price -- and maybe price.</p>
<p>If I'm selling to a large enterprise, though, the list is very different.&nbsp; If I'm a large enterprise, I've already made many, many investments in existing infrastructure software.&nbsp; I want my new social software to work with everything I have -- not as another free-standing entity, but as a &quot;layer&quot;.</p>
<p><em>And I'll pay extra for that capability</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Layers Vs. Free Standing</strong></p>
<p>All sorts of people toss around concepts like &quot;works with&quot; or &quot;integrated&quot; or &quot;gateway&quot; to describe how different software entities interact.&nbsp; </p>
<p>But if you're doing corporate social software, I think you're going to want to really drill into the details here.</p>
<p>Let's looks at a few examples ...</p>
<p><strong>The Concept Of People</strong></p>
<p>The company I work for already has several systems of record that define &quot;people&quot;: name, location, phone number, etc.&nbsp; Do I want a separate domain in my social software that defines people differently?&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>Probably not.</em></p>
<p>Ideally, the concept of a &quot;person&quot; (as found in our PeopleSoft HR system) would be almost identical to the concept of &quot;person&quot; as found in my social software platform.&nbsp; Sure, there's stuff in the HR system that shouldn't be in the social software (!), as well as stuff in the social software that doesn't belong in the HR system.</p>
<p>But between the two, there are certain fields that are one and the same.&nbsp; I want to use my HR system as the &quot;system of record&quot; regarding people-related information, and not my social software.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Now, having my social software put a &quot;social face&quot; on that boring HR system we use -- that's OK.</p>
<p>I want my social software to create a &quot;layer&quot; over my existing concepts of people.</p>
<p><strong>The Concept Of Calendar</strong></p>
<p>At my company, we use Microsoft's Outlook religiously.&nbsp; We all schedule our time, our deadlines, our meetings, etc. across multiple time zones and multiple languages using Outlook.&nbsp; Because everyone uses it, we can synchronize time-based events without a phone call, email, etc.</p>
<p>Now, if my social software introduces a separate, distinct concept of &quot;calendar&quot;, how useful is that?&nbsp; In the best case, it's just a useless piece of frippery.&nbsp; Worst case, some people start using it as their primary calendar, and then we lose the benefits of coordinating time-based events -- like conference calls.</p>
<p>I want my social software to create a &quot;layer&quot; over my existing concept of time -- a calendar.&nbsp; And, if my social software vendor offers a calendar, I'll probably have to disable its functionality.</p>
<p><em>BTW, if you can figure out a way to expose what I'm already using (e.g. Outlook) in a more friendly, social way -- I'm all for it.</em></p>
<p><strong>The Concept Of Content</strong></p>
<p>Here's my favorite -- I've written about this before.</p>
<p>At EMC, we've got a corporate &quot;content backbone&quot; -- Documentum.&nbsp; Now, lest you think that's unique simply because we happen to develop and sell Documentum, that's not quite true.&nbsp; A large number of organizations have content backbones.&nbsp; And, given our business model at EMC, if we weren't using Documentum, we'd be using something else.</p>
<p>The content backbone is more than just a repository -- it's an active, living entity that implements workflow, active information management, repurposing of content, and so on.&nbsp; It ain't just a honkin' document database.</p>
<p>Do I want my social software vendor to implement its own concept of content?&nbsp; Probably not.</p>
<p>I'd like my existing corporate content to be exposed (and modifiable) in the social software.&nbsp; Any content (or metadata) that I can pick up in the social environment I'd like to be able to manage with my content backbone.</p>
<p>If you dig into any modern content management system, you'll find a very fine-grained environment for controlling different aspects of a document -- far beyond what any social software vendor is prepared to implement.</p>
<p>I've got security and encryption features.&nbsp; All sorts of statistics that I can go look at.&nbsp; Integration with multiple web portals -- both internal and external.&nbsp; The list goes on and on and on.</p>
<p>I want my social software vendor to create a &quot;layer&quot; over my existing concept of content.&nbsp; I don't want to create a separate, distinct and isolated content domain -- one that's arguably much less functional than the one I've already got.</p>
<p><strong>And, I Don't Want To Be In The Software Development Business</strong></p>
<p>When I share these thoughts, someone inevitably says &quot;well, you know, you can develop your own interfaces&quot;.&nbsp; Yes, that's true.&nbsp; Nothing here that time, money and a small team of developers can't fix.</p>
<p>But I don't want to be in the software development business.&nbsp; I don't have to do significant software development on my other enterprise platforms, why should social software be any different?</p>
<p><strong>Does This Really Matter?</strong></p>
<p>Look, if you're some small business, and you're looking at social software, the preceding discussion probably matters less to you.&nbsp; I mean, you probably haven't invested in some of those things -- and, if you have -- the chaos that would be created by separateness only occurs on a smaller scale, and you can probably live with it.</p>
<p>Or, if you're a &quot;team leader&quot; in a larger organization, and you're trying to get a nice environment for your team to collaborate around, you may look at the discussion above and say &quot;it doesn't really matter to me&quot;, simply because you're focused on your needs, and not those of the broader organization.</p>
<p>And, if you're a social software vendor, and these are your target markets, you can safely ignore what I'm talking about.</p>
<p><strong>What Large Corporations Are Really Interested In Social Software?</strong></p>
<p>I've met several dozen now -- and they all seem to share similar attributes.&nbsp; </p>
<p>They're large, complex, global enterprises with a broad range of diverse offerings.&nbsp; They're essentially built on knowledge workers -- smart people who know how to do stuff.&nbsp; They've got a culture of innovation, of sharing, of leading.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>And they've all got the itch to do something with social media proficiency like we're doing at EMC.</em></p>
<p>Every one of them that I've met has already invested heavily in things like centralized HR databases, shared calendars and email systems -- and enterprise content management systems.</p>
<p>I would argue -- very strongly -- that these large corporations will want social software that acts as a social layer over their existing capabilities, and doesn't feebly try to replace them.&nbsp; Extends what they already have, and brings more value to their existing investments.</p>
<p><strong>A Maturing Industry?</strong></p>
<p>Many of us as we grow up end up going through a phase where we rebel against the established order, and commit ourselves to righting the world's wrongs.&nbsp; And then we grow up a bit, and find that having a nice career, a spouse, a nice car, etc. really isn't such a horrible thing.</p>
<p>I'm guessing that the social software business might be going through the same phase to a certain extent.&nbsp; They're trying to change the order of things.</p>
<p>That's fine, but your single largest target market -- large corporations -- also wants to see things changed, but at the same time they have some logical, rational constraints about what kind of changes they can pursue, and which ones they can't.</p>
<p>I think the software vendors that end up winning in large corporations will be the ones that adopt a &quot;layered&quot; view of what they do over existing capabilities, and focus less on ignoring or replacing the investments that have already been made.</p>
<p><em>At least, I hope so.</em></p>
</div>
More on "Going Outside"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-493006902008-05-01T20:16:53-04:002008-05-01T20:16:53-04:00Well, we've had our internal platform for a while, and we're more than ready to go outside and start having external conversations (beyond our growing blogging corps, that is). I wrote a while back about how we're preparing to "go...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Well, we've had our internal platform for a while, and we're more than ready to go outside and start having external conversations (beyond our growing <a href="http://chucksblog.typepad.com/a_journey_in_social_media/2008/04/building-your-b.html">blogging corps</a>, that is).</p>
<p>I wrote<a href="http://chucksblog.typepad.com/a_journey_in_social_media/2008/03/going-outside.html"> a while back</a> about how we're preparing to &quot;go outside&quot; in a thoughtful way.</p>
<p>Lately, though, we've added some thinking to our overall approach that might be useful to you as well.</p><p><strong>We've Seen This Movie Before</strong></p>
<p>Remember, our stated goal here is &quot;social media proficiency&quot; for EMC.&nbsp; Yes, we'd like to see oodles of juicy ROI everywhere, but the way we're getting there is simple: learn how to use this stuff, and the goodies will follow, or not, as the case may be.</p>
<p>And, as we get into various situations as we prepare to go external, we find ourselves coming back to the many lessons we've learned on the internal platform.</p>
<p>Of all the things we've decided to do (or not do), the decision to become proficient internally first has got to be one of the best ones.&nbsp; I'd hate to be wrestling with some of these problems starting from a blank piece of paper.</p>
<p><strong>Reducing Friction</strong></p>
<p>If your goal is to get everyone proficient internally, you spend a lot of time thinking of ways to reduce &quot;friction&quot; in the whole process.</p>
<p>As an example, we didn't institute a charge-back function for internal users.&nbsp; Although there were a few passionate corporate voices around &quot;everyone should carry their own weight&quot;, we were able to fund the activity centrally, and not force people through a charge-back process for the simple privilege of sharing their thoughts with others.</p>
<p>The result?&nbsp; A big hunk of friction came out of the whole system.&nbsp; All that's required to participate is a simple navigation over to a cleverly named internal web site, and click on &quot;login&quot;.&nbsp; That's it.&nbsp; I shudder to think what things would look like if you had to fill out a form, get your managers' approval, wait 48 hours, have it lost in the process, start over again, and so on.</p>
<p>That's what worked internally -- but how does that apply externally?&nbsp; Turns out -- pretty much the same way.</p>
<p>I mentioned earlier that we're seeing lots and lots of smaller external communities that want to form around passionate topics.&nbsp; That's a sharp departure from our original thinking of a few, ginormous mega-communities.</p>
<p>Now, let's say you're someone who's brave enough to propose an external community to your peers and your management.&nbsp; You're already signing up to build the community, launch the community, and live with it for a while.&nbsp; You're already anxious about what you're proposing, aren't you?</p>
<p>Now, if we added a $10k charge, multiple levels of management approval, a detailed plan, and so on -- isn't that more friction in the system?&nbsp; And, if it fails, isn't it worse than before?</p>
<p>So, what I'm proposing is a &quot;slush fund&quot; to help the first 10-20 communities get going outside, and become proficient.&nbsp; No chargeback whatsover until the community is up, has demonstrated value, and so on -- at which point I'd expect them to fund what they're doing, so we can focus on other, newer communities.</p>
<p>The initial reaction to this was &quot;hey, if someone wants an external community, they should be prepared to pay&quot;.&nbsp; Can't argue with that -- but what I can say is that extracting that payment ahead of the value demonstrated will only lead to far fewer external communities being formed, at a far slower rate.</p>
<p>And, if the goal is accelerating social media proficiency, that particular approach doesn't help with that goal, right?</p>
<p>There's also the nasty wrinkle that happens when someone is asked for money up front.&nbsp; If I'm interested in having an external community, and I've got $10k to spend, why should I give it to the corporate guys?&nbsp; Gee, I could probably do better, for less money, and with less corporate interference -- doing something on one of those free or low-cost services.</p>
<p>And, if that happens, we'll have a very different problem on our hands to deal with.&nbsp; Sure, we could spend time beating people up and forcing them to use the corporate platform (rather than doing their own thing), but think of the cost in time, effort and -- well -- friction.</p>
<p>I'd like to avoid all of that if possible ...</p>
<p><strong>Taking The Idea Further</strong></p>
<p>One of the other smart things we did was set up a new function internally -- user enablement -- to provide a friendly, supportive, non-IT interface into the platform.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Got a question?&nbsp; Need some help?&nbsp; Looking for some friendly tips?&nbsp; We've got a nice user-facing person to answer your questions, and provide empathy when you might need it ;-)</p>
<p>As a result, people embraced our internal platform, simply because it wasn't another IT platform.&nbsp; There were nice, helpful people involved who cared about your experience.&nbsp; I think this directly led to faster adoption.</p>
<p>So, why wouldn't the same effect work externally?</p>
<p>The way it's set up now, our hosting deal basically turns over a naked Clearspace instance to a prospective community builder.&nbsp; Can we really expect 10-30 people to learn the innards of how to set up Clearspace, and how to run the more technical aspects of a community?</p>
<p>Or, do we want to get one person to help the 10-30 other people, at which point community effects take over?</p>
<p>If the goal is to accelerate social media proficiency, we'll need that &quot;helper&quot; role, won't we?</p>
<p>The same can be said for our community coach.&nbsp; We have a full-time person who's engaging with prospective community builders for internal communities -- getting them comfortable with the idea, overcoming the dozens of concerns people have, helping them get started hands-on, providing feedback, encouragement, and so on.</p>
<p>So, right off the bat, I'm asking for a big chunk of change for shared infrastructure, and two additional headcount to make sure people use it well.&nbsp; </p>
<p><strong>Getting Consistency</strong></p>
<p>It's unreasonable to expect that someone outside of EMC would interact with one or two communities that we've established.&nbsp; And no one like managing dozens of usernames and passwords.</p>
<p>We'll be investing in extending our existing authentication / registration framework (created for our exisitng portal, Powerlink) to embrace our new gaggle of communities.&nbsp; That'll mean that you can sign up once, and use the same credentials everywhere that makes sense.</p>
<p>I also want to expose participants in one community to other places they might be interested in.&nbsp; Right now, I'm thinking about two or three mechanisms.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Sure, we can have &quot;front pages&quot; that list out the different communities, who might be interested in them, and so on.&nbsp; But, once through that front door, you might not know what else is going on.&nbsp; So I'd like to put some thought into having each external community &quot;promote&quot; in some fashion the other web resources that are available, and encourage people to go take a look.</p>
<p>Now, that's not going to happen organically, is it?&nbsp; So there's another role for our yet-to-be-hired external social media team -- providing a consistent and engaging experience across all of our external communities and web assets.</p>
<p><strong>Getting Good At CoCreation</strong></p>
<p>Community participants have this way of sharing what they'd REALLY like to talk about, which might be not exactly what the internal community sponsor had in mind.&nbsp; In addition to helping everyone at EMC to be as responsive and as flexible as possible, I'm sure we're going to have to help navigate discussions to the right communities, or even drive formation of new communities based on the participants.</p>
<p>Simply put, I think that everyone who ventures outside the firewall -- community sponsor, or part of the overall enablement team -- is going to have their hands very full keeping up with everyone.</p>
<p><strong>Comfort Levels Are Improving</strong></p>
<p>When we started blogging externally, there was a fear that Bad Things Would Happen.&nbsp; Guess what?&nbsp; They haven't.&nbsp; OK, maybe a few minor issues, but certainly not the doom-and-gloom scenario some could envision.</p>
<p>When we built our internal platform, once again there was a very real fear that Bad Things Would Happen.&nbsp; And, once again, they really haven't.&nbsp; As a matter of fact, it's a very civilized, intelligent discussion going on for the most part.&nbsp; Nothing like the prospect of embarassing yourself in front of several thousand of your co-workers to make you think twice before you press the &quot;post&quot; button ...</p>
<p>And, as we go external, I think there's a general acceptance that maybe, this time, Bad Things Won't Happen.&nbsp; The communities are small, they'll be largely &quot;gated&quot; -- you'll know who you're talking to -- and any potential &quot;problem&quot; will be very limited in scope.</p>
<p><strong>As Is An Appreciation For The Effort Involved</strong></p>
<p>At the same time, there's a growing appreciation on just how hard it is to get a community going.&nbsp; On the internal platform, many have tried, and only a few have truly succeeded.&nbsp; </p>
<p>As a matter of fact, we're routinely sending people who want to go external over to the internal platform with the challenge to see if they can get a party going on the internal platform before going outside.</p>
<p>The logic is simple: if you can't get a vibrant community going on a topic across 40,000 EMCers, you certainly won't be successful outside the firewall.&nbsp; A lot of people look at this, and rethink just how much they really want to do it.</p>
<p>During the last few months, a small external community got launched as kind of an experiment.&nbsp; I knew it was going to go stagnant, but there's nothing like a big flaming example just to remind people on how hard these things are.&nbsp; At EMC, it's useful to point to successes.&nbsp; It's also useful to point to failures.</p>
<p>I'll keep you updated as things go from here ...</p></div>
Building Your Blogging Corpstag:typepad.com,2003:post-490186882008-04-25T11:26:47-04:002008-04-25T11:26:47-04:00Most of these posts have been around how we're rolling out the platform, getting communities to form, justifying, and so on. And, as I was thinking about things the other day, I realized I hadn't exposed all of you to...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Most of these posts have been around how we're rolling out the platform, getting communities to form, justifying, and so on.</p>
<p>And, as I was thinking about things the other day, I realized I hadn't exposed all of you to another major theme of what we've been working on -- building a corps of proficient, outside-the-firewall bloggers doing so on behalf of the corporation.</p>
<p>And, once again, I think we've hit upon a pretty good approach -- one that I don't see being employed too much by other companies.</p>
<p><em>So -- let me share.</em></p><p><strong>Opinions On Corporate Blogging Vary Widely</strong></p>
<p>I think that's because there are very few good corporate bloggers to go look at.&nbsp; Most of them are pretty sad, IMHO.&nbsp; The mindset isn't right, they're re-hashed corporate propoganda, they're updated infrequently, and so on.</p>
<p>Conversely, I see a few effective corporate blogging efforts out there.&nbsp; I happen to think EMC's is one of them, but there are others.</p>
<p>As an example, <a href="http://www.emc.com/about/community/blogs.htm">check out the roster</a> we've been able to build up over the last year.</p>
<p>If you spend any time cruising them, you'll notice that they're lively, entertaining, updated on a reasonably frequent basis, have unique points of view, and so on.&nbsp; All interesing individuals in their own right; yet flying under the EMC flag.</p>
<p>Not bad, from where I sit.</p>
<p>Compare them with <a href="http://blogs.hds.com/">this</a> and <a href="http://blogs.netapp.com/all_blogs/2008/03/netapp-blogs.html">this</a> from competitors in our industry -- the picture is very different: infrequently updated, narrow and corporate points of view, no one's having any fun, or so on.&nbsp; Sure, there's a glimmer of light here and there, but -- overall -- it's not a happy offering.</p>
<p>Or, perhaps this <a href="http://chucksblog.typepad.com/chucks_blog/2008/04/i-dont-know-qui.html">interesting twist from Dell</a>.&nbsp; Rather than build their own corporate bloggers on this strategic topic, they're essentially paying people to blog on their behalf.</p>
<p>From my point of view, it looks like some marketing person thought have a bunch of corporate bloggers would be a good idea.&nbsp; They were right -- sort of -- but something quintessential was missing in the execution.</p>
<p><em>I think we've figured out that &quot;magic something&quot;.</em></p>
<p><strong>Are Corporate Blogs Effective?</strong></p>
<p>Yes and yes.</p>
<p>One view is at a <em>business level</em>: as part of any marketing or communication campaign, they've turned out to be amazingly effective, at least for us.</p>
<p>We get our message and point-of-view out, quickly and effectively.&nbsp; It's received -- and reacted to quickly -- by employees, customers, partners, analysts, press and competitors.</p>
<p>Disagree with what a competitor is doing?&nbsp; <em>Have your say!</em>&nbsp; Want to crow about the latest product or corporate achievement?&nbsp; <em>Have at it!</em>&nbsp; Want to ruminate about the future of things?&nbsp; <em>Blog on!</em></p>
<p>Lots of people in our world like reading this stuff.&nbsp; Now that we've been doing it for a while, we can't imagine it any other way.</p>
<p>The other view is at the <em>individual level</em>: everyone who's blogging for the company will say -- unequivocally -- that it's helped them dramatically in their careers.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Everyone knows who they are.&nbsp; Their points of view are widely known and acknowledged.&nbsp; They find that the practice of blogging not only makes them better communicators, but they have far more to say than before.</p>
<p><em>It's that Big Career Promotion you do for yourself ...</em></p>
<p><strong>What We've Learned #1 -- Motivations</strong></p>
<p>People blog proficiently for one reason and one reason only: <em>they want to</em>.&nbsp; &nbsp; </p>
<p>There is a certain corporate mindset that -- if you badger people enough, or bribe them enough, or make it sound important enough -- they'll blog proficiently outside the firewall on the corporation's behalf.&nbsp; </p>
<p>I can categorically state that <em>this does not work</em>.&nbsp; Anyone who's started on this basis for us hasn't done well.&nbsp; However, most everyone who's shown a self-generated passion for blogging has done very, very well.</p>
<p>Sure, there are lots of bright, passionate people at EMC who have some incredible things to say, but they're not comfortable with the idea yet, for whatever reason.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>Key point:</em> find people who want to blog already, and work with them.&nbsp; Don't spend too many cycles trying to get people who don't want to do it to somehow want to do it.&nbsp; They'll blog when they're ready -- if ever.</p>
<p><strong>What We've Learned #2 -- Title or Role Has Nothing To Do With It</strong></p>
<p>Some of our best bloggers have non-descript titles in the organization.&nbsp; In that regard, it's the great organizational leveler.&nbsp; Just because you have a big title or a big role in the organization doesn't magically embue you with the ability (or passion!) to blog effectively.</p>
<p>Not only that, but -- if you think about it -- there's a better connection between people with similar roles and functions.&nbsp; Maybe the best CEO blog should be written for other CEOs -- and not the masses!</p>
<p><em>Key point:</em> a good blog is a good blog, whoever writes it.&nbsp; Keep that in mind if you've got a certain status-seeking mentality to your approach.</p>
<p><strong>What We've Learned #3 -- Have A Place To Practice</strong></p>
<p>Speaking from personal experience, learning how to blog proficiently is not the easiest thing I've ever done.&nbsp; I go back and look at my first 5-10 posts, and I think -- sheesh! -- <em>was I bad, or what?</em></p>
<p>Not only that, people need to get comfortable with writing publicly, exposing themselves to comments and criticism, taking feedback, frequent updates, keeping it interesting, and so on.</p>
<p>One of the big reasons I wanted an internal social media platform was to have a &quot;sandbox&quot; to groom future bloggers.&nbsp; Guess what: <em>it worked!</em></p>
<p>Right now, I'd guess that we've got several hundred blogs on our internal platform.&nbsp; Not all are good, but some are absolutely amazing.&nbsp; There's clear value from what they're doing and sharing, even if they never, ever want to venture outside into the big world.</p>
<p><em>But some get the itch ...</em></p>
<p>Indeed, much of our &quot;graduating class&quot; that you see on the corporate site now came up through the ranks on our internal platform.&nbsp; And, trust me, we've got several dozen more that are showing proficiency, and could easily make the transition to the outside -- <em>when they want to</em>, that is.</p>
<p><strong>What We've Learned #4 -- Keep Corporate Sensibilities To An Absolute Minimum</strong></p>
<p>The biggest challenge of any corporate blogging initiative is &quot;corporate&quot; -- it has this nasty way of crushing all the pleasure out of what's essentially a fun activity.</p>
<p>Do we have a corporate blogging policy?&nbsp; <em>Not really.</em>&nbsp; </p>
<p>We have some informal guidelines designed to keep people out of trouble, but that's about it.&nbsp; Things like a disclaimer on your home page that clearly states that -- although you work for EMC -- it's a personal blog, and EMC doesn't review or approve any content here.</p>
<p>Or gentle reminders about treading very lightly on sensitive topics (e.g. future products, potential acquisitions, financial performance, etc.).&nbsp; </p>
<p>Sure, go ahead and be a bit edgy about something that really gets you going -- <em>that's the fun!</em> -- but, please remember, you're sort of representing the company out there.</p>
<p>We keep reminding each other -- and keeping each other in check -- on the best ways to handle particular situations.&nbsp; Community effects really, really help here.</p>
<p>People can lay out their web page any way they want to.&nbsp; There's no &quot;corporate standard&quot; for corporate blog layout -- they're individuals who happen to work at a cool company that wants them to blog.</p>
<p>We even sometimes get into polite arguments among ourselves -- <em>publicly</em> -- on interesting topics.&nbsp; Readers come away with the surprising understanding that -- just like any other large company -- there are different points of view.&nbsp; It's 100% authentic, and 100% transparent.</p>
<p>For all of you who are deathly afraid that SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAPPEN if we let people blog unsupervised, I can say -- categorically -- it has not been a problem.&nbsp; </p>
<p>OK, we had one small incident where an engineering type got a bit confused between what we were working on internally, and what we had announced externally, but we corrected the post, and it was no big deal in the scheme of things.</p>
<p><em>Key point:</em> if it isn't fun, people won't do it.&nbsp; I keep reminding people that oats are better before they go through the horse.&nbsp; And blogs are better before they go through a corporate mill.</p>
<p><strong>What We've Learned #5 -- Build A Community Of Like-Minded People Who Share A Passion</strong></p>
<p>In this case, the passion is blogging.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Our community provides advice on all sorts of topics that cover the entire spectrum of blogging activities -- from <em>what should my blog be about</em> to avoiding the <em>&quot;gang swarm&quot; effect</em> when all of our bloggers decide to react strongly to the exact same topic on the exact same day.</p>
<p>Newbie bloggers get all sorts of expert, compassionate help for free.&nbsp; And, even established bloggers need a bit of friendly feedback and coaching once in a while -- including me!</p>
<p><em>Key point:</em> blogging is essentially a social activity, so keep it social!</p>
<p><strong>Back To Business Value</strong></p>
<p>I've kind of evolved into the &quot;lead blogger&quot; at EMC.&nbsp; People will toss around numbers that my blogging efforts -- alone --- are worth anywhere from $5m to $10m to much higher numbers -- in terms of equivalent marketing spend -- each year.</p>
<p><em>Guys, all I want is my 10%.&nbsp; Really, that's all ...</em></p>
<p>Now, I don't know how you'd go about measuring that precisely, but the point is clear: a single, proficient and passionate blogger is a very, very valuable asset in the marketing and PR mix.</p>
<p>Now, here's the great part: <em>the more the merrier</em>.&nbsp; Whether it's one, ten or a hundred proficient bloggers, the value to the corporation keeps increasing and increasing and increasing.</p>
<p>One of the side effects of our internal social software platform is that <em>we've built an engine for producing a new crop of proficient, passionate bloggers on a regular basis</em> -- as well as a mechanism for keeping the existing ones engaged and improving.</p>
<p>Now, I could have justified our entire internal investment for the platform on that basis alone -- and it'd be extremely ROI positive -- but, in our case, it's just another interesting side effect of the strategy we've chosen.</p>
<p><em>Something to think about, no?</em></p></div>
A Cross Post From My Other Blogtag:typepad.com,2003:post-489083442008-04-23T16:21:44-04:002008-04-23T16:21:44-04:00I actually got started on this blogging thing by writing about the company I work for: EMC. As corporate blogs go, it's generally well-regarded. I get the freedom to write about just about anything I find interesting (within certain common...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>I actually got started on this blogging thing by writing about the company I work for: EMC.</p>
<p>As corporate blogs go, it's generally well-regarded.&nbsp; I get the freedom to write about just about anything I find interesting (within certain common sense boundaries), and -- as a result -- I am told it is one of the more influential blogs in our little corner of the industry.</p>
<p>A lot of you are interested in this &quot;E2.0&quot; topic because, well, you're interested.</p>
<p>But mainline IT organizations are starting to get really interested about this stuff as well.</p>
<p>And, if you' d like to see it through their eyes, <a href="http://chucksblog.typepad.com/chucks_blog/2008/04/the-most-popula.html">check out this</a>.</p></div>
Taking The Next Big Steptag:typepad.com,2003:post-489073722008-04-23T16:01:27-04:002008-04-23T16:01:27-04:00Well, I've decided that we're at a bit of an inflection point here. We've exceeded all of our initial expectations. We've created far more value than we had any right to expect. And now, I think it's time to step...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Well, I've decided that we're at a bit of an inflection point here.</p>
<p>We've exceeded all of our initial expectations.&nbsp; </p>
<p>We've created far more value than we had any right to expect.</p>
<p>And now, I think it's time to step back, and think a bit around &quot;where do we go from here?&quot;</p><p><strong>To Summarize So Far</strong></p>
<p>Not quite a year ago, we started looking at this whole &quot;enterprise 2.0&quot; thing as a business tool and business strategy.&nbsp; We framed the goal as &quot;social media proficiency&quot; for our company.</p>
<p>Our first step was big, but conceptually simple: put up a behind-the-firewall social software platform, get people to use it productively, and then see where things take you.</p>
<p>We're now approaching the third part of that three-phase approach.</p>
<p><strong>So, What's Going On With Your Social Platform?</strong></p>
<p>All sorts of great things.&nbsp; Sure, we've got a nice number of active, vocal users -- but it's more than that.</p>
<p>Not an hour or two goes by where I don't spot some sort of high-value discussion going on somewhere.&nbsp; These are discussions that either would have never happened, or would have happened much more slowly and less spontaneously than before.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>People finding people, talking about things they care about.</em></p>
<p>We've got dozens of active, thriving communities, and more are popping up all the time.&nbsp; Early on, I despaired about the poor success rate of new communities, but that's not such a concern anymore for a variety of reasons -- like a focused resource on community development (Susan), and general improved comfort with the whole process.</p>
<p>Len mentioned in his blog that he's now got a &quot;discussion feed&quot; on our corporate intranet portal -- a ticker of who's talking about what.&nbsp; As a result, we've got a steady (and curious!) crowd heading our way.</p>
<p>&quot;Community effects&quot; are now evident everywhere -- there's a spirit of volunteerism, helping out, welcoming new people into the crowd, and so on.&nbsp; </p>
<p>And, well, I've lost count on how many good blogs there are out there now.</p>
<p>Compared with what we've spent, this has got to be the most ROI-positive IT project I've ever heard about.&nbsp; </p>
<p><em>I just can't prove it easily ...</em></p>
<p><strong>Infrastructure Concerns</strong></p>
<p>We got started as a &quot;pilot&quot;, but now it's time to build a bigger foundation behind the firewall: beefier servers, more storage, maybe some database opimization, a dedicated IT person to help us, and so on.&nbsp; IT is willing to help, we just need to work through the process.&nbsp; The good news is that the platform's growing success is pretty obvious to everyone.</p>
<p>It's also pretty clear that we'll need to add video to the mix.&nbsp; Not the produced, formal kind, but the unproduced, informal kind.&nbsp; And, as we get into more video, not only will we need more storage (<em>good thing we're a storage company</em>), but video streaming becomes interesting, and -- of course -- more load on the network.</p>
<p>Not to pick on the Jive people, but I think we're going to be routinely busting various limits in their product -- nothing serious, but when you've got thousands of active users, the physics can change.&nbsp; Minor growing pains in the big scheme of things, I'd offer.&nbsp; We'll also have to probably spring for a dedicated test/dev environment, since we want to stay on the &quot;release train&quot; just as fast as we can.</p>
<p><strong>Our Mobile Workforce</strong></p>
<p>We desperately need to find a way to engage our mobile knowledge workers.&nbsp; Sure, they have laptops, they just use them infrequently.&nbsp; The target of choice?&nbsp; <em>A CrackBerry, to be sure ...</em></p>
<p>Our initial &quot;mobile&quot; list is pretty simple.&nbsp; </p>
<p>First, we need to make sure people can respond to posts from email.&nbsp; I'm told that the product can do this, we just need to shake it out, show people how to use it, and so on.</p>
<p>But that doesn't give you a sense of what's going on elsewhere, does it?&nbsp; Ideally, we'd present our &quot;webtop&quot; interface to our mobile users, but that's not practical on several levels.&nbsp; I'm guessing that the answer is a configurable RSS reader (sitting behind the firewall, naturally) that can watch various groups, and feed via a mobile browser.&nbsp; There's also the thorny problem of getting VPN access from BlackBerry web browsers to servers resident behind the firewall.</p>
<p>Finally, it'd be great if someone could post to a pre-defined space or two via email ...</p>
<p>Bottom line -- I'm going to need some budget to buy some stuff, and get some smart people to work this out.</p>
<p><strong>ECM Integration</strong></p>
<p>Our company has a &quot;content backbone&quot; built around our own product -- Documentum -- that's not part of the current environment. </p>
<p>I want two things here:&nbsp; first, I want to expose existing corporate content to be part of the discussion in our social environment, and, second -- I want selected wikis, conversations, blog posts, etc. to be &quot;captured&quot; as enterprise content for feeding into other content-driven business processes.</p>
<p>The integration is being worked (so I'm told!), but -- there's still going to be budget involved to acquire the technology, integrate it, manage it, and roll it out to everyone.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Despite the complexity and costs, I see this next step as absolutely essential on multiple levels.</p>
<p><strong>Going Outside The Firewall</strong></p>
<p>Behaviorally, we're ready to start forming external communities.&nbsp; We may not have all the pieces 100% in place (roles, technology, processes), but we're very close.</p>
<p>Despite our vendor's best efforts, we're still not 100% comfortable with the hosting approach we're taking.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Part of it is on our side -- just like we had to dedicate resources to foster internal proficiency and hide the guts of the technology from people -- we're going to have to assemble a small team to provide shared services for the ever-growing list of people who want to start external communities of different flavors.</p>
<p><em>We can't expect them all to be proficient Clearspace admins, can we?</em></p>
<p>I also think we're getting more comfortable with the idea of &quot;community diversity&quot; outside the firewall.&nbsp; </p>
<p>I can remember a time when the thinking was a small number of large communities.&nbsp; It's now shifted to a large number of smaller communities, with &quot;navigation aids&quot; to help people find other things they might find interesting -- an interesing consequence of our internal experiences.</p>
<p>I'm also expecting a similar learning curve when we go outside.&nbsp; Our first few (hopefully small!) communities may struggle a bit, but -- over time -- things should get much better and much easier.</p>
<p><strong>Measurement</strong></p>
<p>At some point, our free ride will come to an end.&nbsp; The company will realize they're spending a big chunk of change on this stuff, and there will be a clear need to formalize metrics around the paybacks we're getting from a multi-headed investment.</p>
<p>But, I'm not quite sure what we'll measure, or how we'll measure it.&nbsp; Some real work will need to be done around an &quot;E2.0&quot; balanced scorecard, and how well we're doing against it.&nbsp; And, I don't think anyone has really done this yet, as far as I know.</p>
<p>Sure, we're poking around with &quot;buzz measurement&quot; tools, and anyone can capture page views, but I keep thinking we're missing the real value of having people meaningfully engage with each other.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Sometimes, I think we're trying to measure a great conversation, or a wonderful party.&nbsp; The qualitiative aspects seem to outweigh the quantitative ones.&nbsp; &nbsp;Sure, we could construct a quantitative case, but that'd miss the point of what's turning out to really matter. </p>
<p><em>Maybe we'll hire an analyst group and let them go think about it on our behalf ... ;-)</em></p>
<p><strong>Note What's Missing</strong></p>
<p>I think it's also interesting to note what I don't think we need.</p>
<p>For example, I don't think I need people / budget / management resources to drive internal awareness and engagement.&nbsp; We're past the tipping point -- it wouldn't be a good investment.</p>
<p>And, since we only have 2-3 core members of the &quot;enablement team&quot;, I don't think we'll need much more there.&nbsp; Community effects (people helping people to be proficient) are starting to kick in.</p>
<p>We also don't need a management review and governance process for problems that crop up -- mostly, because there haven't been that many, IMHO.</p>
<p>And, of course, since we've elected to stay on &quot;standard product&quot; at all costs, we don't have developers, etc. for our environment.</p>
<p><em>All good, I'd offer.</em></p>
<p><strong>The Team's Done Great&nbsp; -- So Far</strong></p>
<p>Our success so far has largely derived from two major components: a great (virtual) team that's passionate about this stuff, and -- of course -- significant help from our vendor, Jive.</p>
<p>But, as we get to the next phase of this, the dynamics are going to change.&nbsp; There will be more people involved, perhaps more vendors involved -- everyone will have to take on a slightly different role than they did in the past.</p>
<p><em>I just hope we don't lose the &quot;fun&quot; in all of this ...</em></p>
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Getting The Mindset Righttag:typepad.com,2003:post-488593242008-04-22T16:29:01-04:002008-04-22T16:29:01-04:00Found this great post over at Infovark that captures the essence of what makes these social media proficiency projects so hard. Now, if you're a classical-type person, how would you react to the chart at the bottom? Worth a quick...Chuck Hollis

Found this great post over at Infovark that captures the essence of what makes these social media proficiency projects so hard.

Now, if you're a classical-type person, how would you react to the chart at the bottom?

Worth a quick read ...

Requests From The Communitytag:typepad.com,2003:post-488532282008-04-22T15:38:28-04:002008-04-22T15:38:28-04:00So, along the way, I've gotten on some email distros of people who are trying to do pretty much the same thing we're doing here. I thought I'd share the recent traffic -- if you're interested ... How Do You...Chuck Hollis
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>So, along the way, I've gotten on some email distros of people who are trying to do pretty much the same thing we're doing here.</p>
<p>I thought I'd share the recent traffic -- if you're interested ...</p><p><strong>How Do You Organize Your Communities?</strong></p>
<p>Well, we really don't, especially when you consider the recent posts on taxonomies.</p>
<p>---- from recent email traffic ----</p>
<p><em>Hi, FWIW, here’s how it’s working for us:</em></p>
<ul><li><em>Three major categories: “Getting Started”, “Active Communities A-Z”, and “Archived”</em></li>
<li><em>About 85 communities (e.g. spaces) in the Active category</em></li>
<li><em>Bottoms-up consolidation, e.g. we spot communities that are pretty similar, and ask if they won’t mind sharing a top-level space</em></li>
<li><em>No self-serve communities – yet.&nbsp; If we did, that’d be a fourth top level space</em></li>
<li><em>New communities are proposed and discussed in a “New Communities Forum”, under “Getting Started”</em></li>
<li><em>We dialog with them a bit around their proposal (nothing too serious) to see if they can answer comments, etc., and then we approve</em></li>
<li><em>Total cycle time for new communities is usually same-day.</em></li>
<li><em>Lots of new communities at the outset; arrival rate has declined notably, people are joining existing ones rather than starting anew.</em></li></ul>
<p><em>Pros:</em></p>
<ul><li><em>No endless, pointless taxonomy debates</em></li>
<li><em>People are encouraged to explore a bit – experienced users have no problem finding what they want</em></li>
<li><em>Bad community names and/or poor topics chosen have the expected results – no biggie</em></li>
<li><em>Response time for new community formation is fast, since there’s no argument where something goes</em></li>
<li><em>Communities are free to evolve in any direction they want, as they don’t live in a taxonomy</em></li></ul>
<p><em>Cons:</em></p>
<ul><li><em>Cluttered home page, a bit off-putting for new users – Clearspace 2.0 will give us a bit more control over this.</em></li>
<li><em>People gaming the system: starting their community names with numbers or the letter “A”</em></li>
<li><em>Certain people hate the clutter and are quite insistent that “this has to be fixed!!!”</em></li></ul>
<p><em>Given what we were trying to achieve (e.g. big conversations around passionate topics that span traditional boundaries), this was – in hindsight – a good choice.&nbsp; Your needs and requirements might be different.&nbsp; <br /><br />However, be prepared for people who really, really want it to be a neat and very orderly place, e.g 1.0 vs. 2.0<br /><br />Hope this helps.</em></p>
<p>---- end email snip ----</p>
<p><strong>So, How Do You Handle Proposals For New Communities?</strong></p>
<p>Glad you asked.</p>
<p>Basically, it's self-service.&nbsp; Some one fills out a proposal template, it's discussed a bit, and then tehy get their space.&nbsp; We end up granting something like 98% of the requests.</p>
<p>Which leads to two related questions: first, can space owners create their own subspaces, and second, do you end up turning down some community requests?</p>
<p>Yes, proficient space owners can request their own subspace – we don’t give them admin privileges, but the turnaround is same-day.</p>
<p>We don’t really “turn down” space requests (other than ones that are out of bounds, e.g. involving non-EMC employees), but we will <em>Discuss Things</em> Incessantly until they either wise up, or go away.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>
<p>Example: someone wanted to start a community “What’s Wrong With EMC?” which could easily devolve into a rant session.&nbsp; Rather than say “no”, we patiently asked questions until the person decided it wasn't really a good idea..</p>
<p>If we think that there won’t be any interest in a proposed topic or discussion, we bias in favor of letting people experiment.&nbsp; We also are getting good at exposing them to other discussions.&nbsp; The incremental cost of a “failed community” is absolutely zero, in my mind.&nbsp; </p>
<p>Some people don’t like ghost towns (and neither do I) but we weighed the pros and cons, and would rather live with a few abandoned fantasies as opposed to being more controlling about who can do what.</p>
<p><strong>Do You Have Any Templates You'd Like To Share?</strong></p>
<p>Sure -- the first is the proposal template for a new community.&nbsp; Note the attempt at an open, friendly tone, yet with some expectations and accountability.</p>
<p>And, if they can't follow these steps on the platform, the prognosis is poor for them as a community manager, so it's a bit of a test as well ;-)</p>
<p>----- begin cut and paste from internal doc -----</p>
<p><strong>So, you've looked around, read all the docs, and you're ready to propose a new community! Great!<br /><br /><em><span style="color: #800000;">Please copy and paste this document into a new wiki document within [New Community Forum] and change the document title to reflect your proposed community name.</span></em></strong><br /><strong><em></em></strong><br /><strong>Thanks!</strong></p><hr /><h4><span style="color: #000080;">Why are you building this community?</span></h4>
<p><em>(What problems are you trying to solve? How is it done today? How might it be better in the future? Etc.)</em></p>
<h4><span style="color: #000080;">What hot topics will bring the community together?</span></h4>
<p><em>(Give us an idea of what the community is passionate about, and what they'll be working on or discussing together.)</em></p>
<h4><span style="color: #000080;">How do you intend to invite participation and drive communication in your community? What are the first 5 things you'll publish?</span></h4>
<p><em>(Please give us a list of the first 5 things you'll publish in your community to drive collaboration - blog, discussion, document topics/titles.)</em></p>
<h4><span style="color: #000080;">Who will be your regular contributors? Who has agreed to commit time on a consistent basis to keep your content fresh?</span></h4>
<p><em>(At least one, the more the merrier! Think &quot;divide and conquer&quot; - the more committed contributors, the more shared the load. Please name names.)</em></p>
<h4><span style="color: #000080;">Who will be your community manager, and can this person budget enough time for this? Has this person regularly contributed on EMC ONE to-date?</span></h4>
<p><em>(Hint: if you're filling out this form, it's probably you! Remember: It takes time to keep your community active! You should be prepared to actively engage and participate on a daily basis!)</em></p>
<h4><span style="color: #000080;">What will your community be called?</span></h4>
<p><em>(Clever names are OK, but it ought to be clear from the name what the community is all about.)</em></p>
<h4><span style="color: #000080;">In the next three months, how many people will you invite to participate actively within your community?</span></h4>
<p><em>(How many people do you intend to invite and how many are likely to participate?)</em></p>
<h4><span style="color: #000080;">Have you read the suggestions for best practices in [link to &quot;getting started guideline doc&quot;]? On board with following them?</span></h4>
<p><em>(If you haven't seen these, go take a look please.)</em></p>
<h4><span style="color: #000080;">Any other questions, concerns or comments?</span></h4>
<p><em>(Anything you're curious or concerned about? Let us know.)</em></p>
<p>----- end cut and paste -----</p>
<p><strong>What About Your &quot;Guidelines&quot; Document?</strong></p>
<p>Glad you asked -- again, note the attempt at a somewhat friendly tone.</p>
<p>--- begin cut and paste from internal document ----</p>
<h4>We don't want to have too many rules and regulations here, but we would like you to be mindful of a few guidelines to help this be a good experience for everyone.</h4><hr /><h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Please, let us help you get started!</span></h4>
<p>Take a look at our [Getting Started] section or our [FAQs &amp; Tutorials] to find answers to some basic questions about EMC ONE. Or, post a message or ask a question in the [Feedback Forum]. If it’s an urgent situation, please send us an email at [internal email address].</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Let us know about any bugs you find.</span></h4>
<p>Please send an email to [internal email address] detailing what you believe is a bug, and include any screen shots so that we can try to recreate the issue. We will then work with the vendor to resolve the issue and provide any updates we receive to the community. </p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Please complete your user profile!</span></h4>
<p>But only if you want people to find you to leverage your expertise, experience, and build lasting business relationships and friendships!</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Please don't repost &quot;authoritative content&quot; such as found in [list of existing online repositories]</span><span style="COLOR: #000080">, and other online EMC systems.</span></h4>
<p>Unless you are soliciting feedback for a “work in progress,” please link to items found on other online systems when referencing them in discussions, documents, and blog posts. We don't want multiple copies of authoritative content floating around, nor do we want to fill up our disk space. We also don’t want users to become confused as to where they should go for these types of content.</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">No humongous files.</span></h4>
<p>The following are the file size limits:</p>
<ul><li>Attachments = 25MB </li>
<li>Images = 5MB </li>
<li>Video = 50MB <br />Please let us know if you believe there should be an adjustment via the [Feedback Forum].</li></ul>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Tag everything, please.</span></h4>
<p>You can find information one of three ways on EMC ONE.</p>
<ol><li>You can navigate to a space (also called a taxonomy view) and look around. </li>
<li>You can search on a keyword or two. </li>
<li>You can use tags to find things. </li></ol>
<p>Always try to make sure that content you create has a useful set of tags assigned to it. It will help other users be able to find it!</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Link to items referenced.</span></h4>
<p>If you reference a document, discussion, or blog post you read on the site, please link to it so that others can find it.</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Rate content so others can see what’s helpful.</span></h4>
<p>Rate content (by clicking on the stars below the final line of the posting) that you find helpful, so it will become more popular on the site, and other users will be able to find it! A win-win-win!</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Let's not waste licenses.</span></h4>
<p>We only have a limited number. If you're just going to be a browser or lurker, that doesn't cost EMC a license, so please don’t login. If you think you're going to want to join in and contribute content – great! Go ahead and login and get started!</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Keep it business-focused.</span></h4>
<p>This is a business tool, so let's keep it EMC-centric. Any off-topic content should be posted in the [off topic space], or will be moved there by site administrators.</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Please don’t spam the community.</span></h4>
<p>It’s all about quality, not quantity. Please, don’t just post to post..</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Have fun and make friends!</span></h4>
<p>Join in the discussions and make new friends at EMC.</p>
<h4><span style="COLOR: #000080">Confidentiality.</span></h4>
<p>Just a reminder that everything on EMC ONE is considered EMC Confidential. </p>
<p>------- end cut and paste ------</p>
<p>Hope you found this helpful!</p>
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